


Cage of Stars

by TerrusDacktellus



Category: Cassandra Palmer Series - Karen Chance
Genre: Angst, F/M, Slow Burn, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7580602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerrusDacktellus/pseuds/TerrusDacktellus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassie Palmer has just shifted back in time with a mysterious artifact to stop it from unleashing the deadly power of a god. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and the last thing she needs is to be distracted by her seriously complicated feelings for her recently resurrected partner, John Pritkin, but now she's stuck with him, and only him, for three weeks: three weeks to stay alive, solve an ancient riddle and not fall in love. Two out of three ain't bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set a little way off in the future of the series, after a point when Cassie has finally managed to save Pritkin and get him back.

I landed in the basement at Dante’s, clutching the damn rock with one hand and Pritkin with the other. He staggered, far from his usual graceful self and peered around in confusion. 

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” he demanded, grabbing my upper arms in a painful grip. It was kind of his signature move but I really wasn’t in the mood for it. 

“I’m doing what you wanted me to do!” I gestured with the deceptively innocent looking lump of rock and Pritkin started back as though it were a bomb that might go off at any second. In his defence, it sort of was. Or certainly had been. 

“Relax!” I said. “It’s not gonna blow. I took us back, like you said.”

He was looking increasingly nonplussed and while I kind of enjoyed the novelty of it, I needed his head in the game. 

“Like I said?” he repeated and I resisted the urge to shake him, mostly because I knew from experience that I’d have more luck trying to shake a tank. 

“You said you could translate these” - I waved the faded hieroglyphs on the rock under his nose - “if you had time. Then you grabbed my hand and gave me this big, meaningful stare.” I shrugged. “So I followed your lead.”

“I … that wasn’t what I … you brought us back?! Where? To when?” 

He was starting to sound pissed, which, perversely, made me relax. There was the Pritkin I knew and lo — liked. 

“The basement of the hotel, about three weeks ago.” I frowned. “You think we need more time? I can take us back further.” 

“Further? Are you insane?! You need to get us back to where we were, now, before we change anything!”

I rolled my eyes at his knee jerk paranoia. “Yeah, sure, great plan. Let’s shift back to the moment where all the stars aligned to unlock our little nightmare box here and bring all the tasty, world ending power Ares could ever want rushing out. Fabulous.”

Pritkin knotted his fingers in his hair, looking like he wished they were wrapped around my throat. That too was familiar and disconcertingly comforting. 

“And what, exactly, is your plan?” he bit out. 

I paused, because, yeah, good question. I hadn’t planned so much as reacted. Faced with an apocalyptic deadline that we were never going to make, I’d opted for the only extension available to us. Now we just had to make it count.

“Um,” I said brilliantly. Pritkin dialled his glare up a few notches and some manic part of my brain gleefully told me that we were approaching the wall slamming part of the evening. God, I thought, I need therapy. “We need to find a safe place to hole up,” I said at last. “With access to supplies. And books and stuff. Somewhere where people won’t notice us.”

“Stop.” He closed his eyes briefly, clearly regretting the words even as they came out of his mouth. “I know a place.” 

* * *

Pritkin’s apartment confirmed all my worst suspicions about the Circle’s stinginess. As I crossed the threshold from the grimy hallway into his cramped, messy rooms, I couldn’t help but remember the elegant suite he’d inhabited in his father’s palace; the bed there was probably bigger than his entire living room. Judging by his sour grimace, he might have been drawing similar comparisons, but then again, that could just have been in reaction to the stale smell. 

“Sorry,” he grunted, stumping into the kitchenette and throwing open a window. “Haven’t been back here in a while.” 

If the solid inch of dust on the furniture was anything to go by, he hadn’t been here much since the Circle put a price on his head, and as far as I could tell, neither had anyone else. The place was definitely a mess, but it was a Pritkin-y mess, dirty shoes in a pile next to the door, a thick layer of papers and scrawled notes covering the minuscule table and books, books on every surface. They loomed in stacks on every available flat space, rubbing shoulders with thick jars of potion ingredients on the shelves that he’d probably put up himself — I recognised his slapdash attitude to DIY — and threatening to topple onto any unsuspecting visitor cozied up on the sofa. Not that I imagined we’d be doing much of that. Shaking quickly free of that thought, I peered around, looking for signs of the search that I knew had to have happened but there was no trace of the careless destruction left by war mages in a hurry.

“Nobody came to search here,” I said, mostly for the sake of making conversation. Pritkin might have fallen in line with my plan out of sheer necessity but that sure as hell didn’t mean he had to like it. Which he’d made abundantly clear by being a complete grump as we’d rode the ley line to his apartment building. The crankiness was par for the course, but the bad tempered silence was new and different and completely weirding me out. 

“The Circle,” I clarified, when he stalked past without an answer. “I would’ve thought they’d have come looking, you know, after the whole betrayal thing.” 

That earned me an eye roll as he flung open a door that turned out to lead into a small bedroom, which, along with the ubiquitous books, seemed to contain what was either a miniature distillery or a mad scientist’s lab, at one quarter scale. Knowing Pritkin, I put my money on the latter. 

“They didn’t have the man power,” he called, opening another window. “The wards I put up would have taken too long to break through, and with the war, they didn’t have any mages to spare. And by the time they decayed, our names had been cleared, and there was no longer any need.”

The open windows were making absolutely no difference to the smell situation, except to let in the stuffy, Nevada heat, but before I could ask what the hell he was doing, Pritkin murmured an incantation that wafted a gust of air from the kitchen. Sluggishly at first, a current began, a warm draft circulating the tiny apartment. It didn’t cool the place down much but it freshened the air and I felt like I could breathe for the first time since we’d arrived. 

“The air conditioning never did bloody work.” Pritkin stood in the doorway to his bedroom, arms folded, watching me. “I had to get creative.” 

He fidgeted as I looked back at him and it felt suddenly odd to be here, in his space. I’d been in his house in Stratford and in his hotel room but neither had felt so personal: he’d long vacated one and the other had only been a temporary set up. This was different. He was really living here, or had been until very recently, and I think the same thought had occurred to him. It dawned on me abruptly that his irritability might stem more from embarrassment than frustration. 

“The water and electricity have been turned off,” he said. “I’ll go see what I can do about that. Stay on the couch and don’t touch anything. I’ve disabled the snares, but there are a number of highly reactive substances in here.”

He brushed past me and for a second I felt the heat from his body, the faint smell of sweat and the ozone crackle of magic going straight to my head. I stepped away quickly but he was already gone, the door slamming behind him. I tried to squash the tingle of unease curling in my stomach, feeling instantly and uncomfortably aware of his absence. 

* * * 

The sofa got boring pretty quickly. It was hellishly uncomfortable for one thing, all lumps and nasty, twisty springs that dug into me inventively and for another, well, it was hard to be in Pritkin’s space, surrounded by his things and not want to take a closer look. I didn’t mean to pry, I just wanted to see this side of him, to store every fact about him I could. Refusing to examine that motive too closely, I kicked off my shoes and stood up on the uneven cushions to examine the shelves over my head.

I don’t know what I had expected: spell books or weapons manuals or maybe The Art of War. Certainly not a handsomely bound set of the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle or rows and rows of English classics. Who knew Pritkin was an Austen fan? That said, I could see him having a certain amount of sympathy for Mr Darcy. I stretched up on tiptoe to examine the higher shelves and found several thick glass jars whose contents gave the unnerving impression of looking back at me, some more modern detective novels and a faded photograph. I nearly missed that last one, tucked away against the wall as it was, and I had to strain myself upwards to get a proper look at it. I recognised Jonas’ trademark, fluffy-hedgehog hair, and beside him, in a formal cloak tied with a silver pin, was Pritkin. Jonas appeared to be shaking his hand and giving him something, and the whole affair seemed to have the tone of some kind of award ceremony. I stepped up onto the arm of the sofa, trying to see just a little higher — 

“What are you doing?” Pritkin’s voice came from right behind me and I jumped, startled. His hands found my waist as I overbalanced, holding me solidly, then settling me safely on the floor. I could have sworn that his touch lingered for a second before he drew away, fingertips skimming over my hips. I resisted the urge to follow their motion, to lean into him like a flower towards the sun. 

“I stayed on the sofa,” I said defensively. “And I didn’t touch anything.” 

He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking, as he often did around me, as if he were on the verge of developing a migraine. 

“Did you sort the water and power already?” I asked, in an effort to distract him. 

He scowled at me like he knew exactly what I was up to but answered anyway. “It’s done. Not exactly legally, but I wasn’t planning on renewing my lease anyway.”

I decided it was better not to ask, for the sake of plausible deniability, and we stood there awkwardly for a moment, another of those unsettling silences that had been happening more ad more since he got back filling the space between us. 

“So now what?” 

I blinked at him in surprise, because Pritkin didn’t ask for instructions or wait for me to take the lead, he always knew what to do, always. But now he was looking at me expectantly, eyebrows raised, like a proper war mage awaiting orders. Yeah, right. He still wasn’t saying anything though, so I breathed in deeply and took stock. It was late, and we’d had an unbelievably long day. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a proper night’s sleep and I was pretty sure it had been a few days since I’d showered. 

“Now we go to bed,” I said decisively, like a real leader would. 

“What?!”

“Look, Pritkin, we have a real breathing space here. Something we don’t get very often and we need to take full advantage.” He was still eyeing me in what looked like alarm. What the hell was even wrong with him? “Why don’t you take the bed?” I suggested. “I can manage on the sofa.” 

His expression cleared. “Like hell you will. I’ll take the couch and you can take the bed. There are clean sheets in the airing cupboard.”

I threw up my hands in frustration. I was pretty sure that if I’d asked him to take the couch, the contrary son of a bitch would have refused. 

The ‘airing cupboard’ turned out to be a linen closet in the ensuite bathroom. I made the bed as Pritkin dismantled the complicated arrangement of glassware because ‘knowing you, you’d probably knock it over in the middle of the night.’ I could still hear him bitching about it as he made up the sofa to sleep on and it soothed the knot in my stomach a little. The bed was narrow but the mattress was an infinite improvement on the sofa from hell, and at that stage, I felt like I probably could have slept on a bed of nails. Not even the potentially world ending rock, which I had hidden under the bed for lack of a better place could have kept me awake at that stage. Lulled by the sound of Pritkin grousing to himself out in the living room, I drifted off to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_I was more intimidated than I should have been to find myself presiding over a meeting like this one: representatives from the Circle, the Senate and the Covens lined the table and despite the fact that I knew them all, the formality of the situation was throwing me off. That and the fact that they all expected me to save the world. Again._

_The latest contender in the race to unleash hell on earth sat in the centre of the table, a vaguely square stone about the size of a man’s fist, covered with faint, pictographic symbols, almost worn away by the passage of time. It looked innocuous enough, but everyone could feel the pulses of sheer energy it gave out, the stirrings of an enormous, malevolent power._

_“Why is it that the Senate is only telling us of this threat hours before the deadline?”_

_That was Jonas, setting exactly the kind of hostile tone I’d been hoping to avoid. Predictably, Marlowe responded in kind._

_“Perhaps we might ask why the Circle hadn’t the slightest notion of the existence of Ares’ Lock until we told them?”_

_Jonas bristled and I cut in before either of them could make things worse._

_“Stop it, both of you.”_

_They turned to me with identical expressions of outraged indignation that would have been hilarious on any other day._

_“We don’t have time for this,” I said. “Mircea, could you please tell them what you told me earlier?”_

_Mircea didn’t look at me as he answered and I set my jaw against the hurt that wanted to crumple my face. The implosion of my personal life could damn well wait until the crisis was over._

_“We retrieved the Lock during a raid on a Black Circle stronghold near the Canadian border three days ago. It was initially thought to be of little importance, however, once we detected its unusual power signature, we studied it more closely. We did not inform our allies because we did not wish to raise unnecessary alarm —”_

_“Wanted to keep a potential weapon to yourselves, more like,” Jonas interjected, in what he probably thought was an undertone._

_“Jonas, please!” I snapped, even though that sounded like exactly what the Senate would have done. To be fair, I was pretty sure the Circle would have done the same._

_Mircea continued serenely as if he had never been interrupted, talking over the thuds and crashes coming from outside._

_“It was only today, when it began to generate significantly more energy than before, that the Consul identified it as Ares’ Lock, based on stories which were ancient even in her youth. We do not have many concrete details, however, according to what we could glean from the legends, the Lock was reputed to be a vessel which held the power of a god, supposedly that of Ares, although the stories vary. We suspect that it is rather a prison, a kind of lock box which holds this power in.”_

_As if it knew it was under discussion, the Lock threw out a violent wave energy that crackled over my skin, leaving a sensation like a greasy film behind. I refused to shudder. Mircea didn’t acknowledge it either, but his voice was grim as he went on._

_“We studied the markings which have been etched into the surface of the Lock and most are part of an entirely unknown alphabet, however, this design on the top” — he indicated a pattern of crystals that I had taken for part of the stone at first — “seems to represent a most unusual alignment of stars and the earth. We believe this alignment, which is mere hours from taking place, to be the key which will unlock the box and release the power inside.”_

_There was a moment of silence as we all digested this._

_The coven leaders spoke up for the first time. “So that is why the Black Circle are so desperate to retrieve this object, then,” said Zara. Another crash like rolling thunder shook the room, as if to prove her point._

_“So it would seem,” said Marlowe, for once entirely serious. Behind him, the door opened and Pritkin slipped in. I didn’t have to wonder how he’d talked his way past the guards: I’d left explicit orders that he was to be allowed entry. I felt an urge to grin goofily when he caught my eye, which was completely ridiculous, as I knew from his expression that he had no good news._

_“And these stories,” said Jonas. “They don’t give details of how the Lock is to be destroyed or kept closed?”_

_“No. We pieced together the little we do know from half forgotten fragments.” Mircea looked like the admission tasted sour in his mouth._

_Pritkin came up behind me and spoke quietly in my ear. “The Black are gaining the upper hand. We need to evacuate soon.”_

_My insides froze and I whipped my head around to see him, catching a flicker of worry crossing his face that he couldn’t quite hide in time._

_“Shit,” I whispered, forgetting myself._

_“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Marlowe, with bitter humour. The door opened again, and the guards filed in, accompanied by an unusual combination of mages, witches and vampires. If ever I needed a sign of how badly things were going, that act of cooperation would do it._

_“Sir.” A mage I didn’t know addressed Jonas. “It’s time to leave.”_

_“Isn’t there anyway of translating these symbols?” Bea asked as she and the other coven leaders stood. Reluctantly, I followed suit._

_“There is nothing to be done.” Mircea looked directly at me for the first time since he’d arrived and my heart clenched in response to the blend of anger and pain that his face betrayed. “We’ve asked everyone, every expert there is.”_

_Only no, I realised, they hadn’t. I turned to Pritkin, still hovering impatiently at my side, as we filed out of the conference room. “What do you make of them?”_

_He frowned at me and I grimaced in response: I knew I was asking a lot of him, to reveal his concealed expertise in such a public forum. But instead of making a fuss, as I’d half expected, he reached for the Lock, and turned it over in his hands, squinting at the faint lines of the symbols. Mircea paused at the door, waiting for us._

_“Just coming,” I said, but, to nobody’s surprise, he didn’t budge._

_Pritkin ignored him, running his fingertips lightly over the rock. “They’re … familiar,” he said and my heart leapt._

_“You know what they are?”_

_“Not quite. I’ve seen something similar before — if I had time, maybe I could decipher them, but …”_

_He trailed off and I understood, but asked anyway. “How much time?”_

_He met my eyes. “Weeks.”_

_We had hours. Less than, maybe. Who knew how accurate the star map on the Lock was._

_“Cassie,” he whispered, reaching out to take my hand. I knew Mircea was still there, still watching us, but somehow, it didn’t matter, I was lost to the world in the sound of Pritkin’s voice, the tentative caress of his fingers on mine. “Cassie, I’m sorry.”_

_He moved his hand up to my face and kissed me, his fingers in my hair and his body against mine, strong and firm, the only real thing — then I became aware of a burning heat at my side. I broke away and saw the Lock still in his hand, glowing with an unearthly light. I felt the energy pulse out again, but this time, there was no sense of it snapping back, it just didn’t stop. It spilled out of the stone, burning and glowing, fire running up Pritkin’s arm, consuming his chest, his throat and last of all, his achingly green eyes._

_“Cassie!” My name came out as a scream of pain —_ “Cassie!” 

I jerked awake to find Pritkin looming over me and for a second, my brain superimposed the dream image of devouring fire onto his face and I scrambled away with a yelp. He stepped backward instantly and just stood there for a minute while I got my breathing under control. 

“You were having a nightmare.” Maybe it was just the earliness of the hour, but his voice sounded strange: unsure, anxious, all the things Pritkin never was. “Are you alright?” 

Another extremely unPritkin-like thing to say. I swallowed, finding my throat uncomfortably dry. “Yeah.” It came out as a croak. “Yeah, I’m fine.” 

He lingered for a moment longer, taking a breath as though he were about to speak, then falling silent again. I’d been dreaming about him, I realised, my mouth suddenly even drier. Had I been calling his name? I had a very good idea what that might have sounded like and I wasn’t sure whether that was more or less embarrassing than the truth.

“I’m going running,” said Pritkin finally. “There’s no need to get up.” 

And there it was, strike number three, concrete evidence that he’d been replaced by a pod person. I pulled a pillow over my face as though I could smother the stupid ass thoughts that kept plaguing me. But one insistent little voice kept piping up to say that Pritkin just hadn’t been himself since he’d gotten back from the dead, that he’d been quiet at times where he used to be loud, and occasionally, weirdly soft where he used to be harsh. It was much like the voice that liked to remind me of the night he died, how inexplicably different he’d been, teasing and almost, well, kind of flirty.

Being dead would change anyone, I told myself harshly. He’s probably traumatised and this is his way of dealing with it, he’ll be back to himself in no time. 

Sure, said the little voice. But he was looking at you like that long before he ever died. 

“Not listening,” I muttered into the pillow. God, I was going full Gollum. 

There’s other things that can change the way a man acts, it went on. Make him smile more, make him gentler.

“Nope.”

Face it, the voice said smugly (and how was a damn voice in my head sounding smug?!). Ever since Pritkin got back, and even before, he’s been acting a whole lot like a man in lo— 

“Shut it!” 

I slammed the pillow back down on the bed and flopped on top of it, glaring at the ceiling as if it were responsible for that sneaky, little voice that kept worming its way into my head. I would have liked to believe that this was just that part of me that had kept me alive since I was a child, always questioning everyone’s motives, second guessing my second guesses because that was the only freaking way to survive. Except that wasn’t really what was going on here, now was it? 

I narrowed my eyes at the ceiling and forced myself to be brutally honest. Deep down, I admitted to myself, I wanted it to be true. Some insane part of me wanted Pritkin to be in love with me, despite the enormous complications that would entail. And why? Well, it certainly wasn’t because I wasn’t in love with him, I knew I wasn’t. I was in love with Mircea and that felt nothing like this. Love, I had discovered, was a tangle of lust and pain and hunger for everything another person could give you, and it burned all the way down. What I felt for Pritkin — I didn’t know what to call it. I mean the pain was there, sure, because the bastard kept trying to nobly sacrifice himself for me. And, yeah, while I was being honest, the lust was there too. That was no hardship to admit; I even had an excuse. He was an incubus, he was constantly close to me and he was attractive. Who could blame me for feeling something? That certainly didn’t mean it was love. As for hunger … I guiltily remembered my eagerness to look through his stuff, to find some secret part of him that no one knew but me, and then dismissed it. That, and that super bizarre dream which I’d been trying not to think about were just a product of my own trauma, my sense of abandonment from when he’d gone and died on me, the asshole. 

In fact, the dream was proof, I told myself. Most of it had been true, just a random reenactment of the sequence of events that had gotten us here in the first place. Right up until the end, when my brain had decided I really needed to see Pritkin die violently, because the first time hadn’t been fun enough. Clearly, the dream kissing and this bizarrely intense attachment I was feeling just stemmed from my very natural fear of him dying again. It would fade, just like his weird behaviour would fade and we would be back to normal. Whatever the hell normal was for us. 

Despairing eventually of my inability to stop thinking around in circles, I got up and had a shower, hunting up some towels from the linen closet and stealing Pritkin’s utilitarian, 2-in-1 shampoo-conditioner. It was only after I’d gotten out and dried off that it occurred to me that perhaps Pritkin letting me stay in bed hadn’t been an uncharacteristic gesture of kindness: I’d arrived with literally nothing but the clothes on my back and they were kind of ripe, after sleeping in them, not to mention more fit for chairing meetings than going through the kind of torture he called a work out. I picked my rumpled dress off the floor and considered it briefly, but no. There was no way I could face wearing that again. 

Having weighed the relative embarrassment potential of rooting through Pritkin’s stuff to find clothes that might fit versus meeting Pritkin while wearing nothing but a towel (nothing he hasn’t seen before, whispered the little voice. That little voice could fuck right off), I opted for the plan that involved less nudity. The chest of drawers by his bed yielded some very faded old T-shirts, which unfortunately still left my ass totally exposed. I opened another drawer and started digging around among the sweatpants, looking for something with a drawstring that I could pull tight enough to actually stay up when I moved. My hand closed around something smooth and wooden and I froze, having sudden visions of booby traps and snares, because it would be exactly like Pritkin to leave something lethal stuffed in among his pants. 

After a moment’s indecision, I used my free hand to carefully lift off the clothes covering whatever the hell it was and discovered something oddly familiar. It was a little, pine box that I had definitely seen it before. It wasn’t until I’d lifted the lid a fraction to peek inside (because it might have looked harmless but I knew Pritkin too well to take chances) that I recognised the contents. It was the memento box, a memorial to his dead wife, that I’d once seen in his old room at Dante’s. But what was it doing here, hidden at the back of a drawer? Why would he bring it from the hotel to his apartment? Everything I knew about the guy told me that he would keep something like this close, as a reminder of the terrible cost of loving anybody. Maybe he just wanted to keep it safe — Dante’s had some sort of crisis pretty much once an hour, on a good day, and Pritkin’s rooms had been trashed multiple times by angry demons and demi gods and the occasional marauding child from Tami’s crew of misfits. Or maybe he didn’t want to be reminded anymore. Maybe he was ready to take risks again. I stood staring at the box, trying to fight off the dopey grin that wanted to break out across my face, then got mad at myself. It didn’t matter what Pritkin felt, I thought grimly, snatching a pair of pants from the drawer, and using my hair tie to knot the waist so it would fit, kind of. I was in love with somebody else, somebody who was not going to be happy when he figured out that I’d spent three weeks playing house with a guy he hated. Things were going to be bad enough when I got back, and I could not afford to make them worse by fixating on another man.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who’s liked, commented and given me awesome feedback so far, you guys keep me writing. Unfortunately, I’m going on holiday next week, so the next update won’t be for two weeks, until Monday 21st. ’Til then, enjoy chapter 3!

Pritkin came back to find me rummaging through the cupboards in his kitchen in a last ditch attempt to find something to eat. The fridge and freezer were completely bare, which was probably a good thing, given that the power had been switched off, and so far all I’d turned up elsewhere was a jar of tahini paste which I was seriously considering eating when he leaned against the doorway. It’d been a long time since dinner the day before, sue me. 

He looked me up and down, caught between amusement and confusion. “What are you wearing?” 

I glared at him, which might have been a little unfair, but I was hungry and rapidly getting beyond the stage of rationally assigning blame. 

“Whatever the hell I could find. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice.” 

“Yes, my selection of women’s clothing in the tiny range is a little limited,” he said, utterly deadpan. Bastard. Since when did he try to be funny? 

I made a rude suggestion as to where he could stick his selection and he just raised an eyebrow, stepping fully into the room and raising a paper bag he’d kept hidden until that point. 

“I’ll eat these myself then.”

“Don’t you dare!” I lunged at him, tripped over the trailing ends of the sweat pants and face planted into his chest. 

“I’d say you ought to buy me dinner first, but I did just pick up breakfast,” he said, peeling me off him. I pulled away and gaped, mouth flapping open like a goldfish. Humour and flirting. Before nine in the morning. Maybe I’d woken up in an alternate universe and no one had told me.

* * *

We sat at the tiny table and I tried not to inhale the doughnut he’d bought me in one mouthful. Pritkin always had been stingy with the pastries. I was obscurely pleased that that, at least, remained the same. He sipped his coffee in an uninterested sort of way that made me suspect he’d already had some. 

“We need a plan of action,” he said, as I licked sugary glaze off my fingers as discretely as I could. He averted his eyes and I wondered if I was grossing him out. Funny. He’d definitely seen me look worse. 

“Hey, you’re the idea guy,” I told him. “I’m just the muscle.”

“Very funny.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin resting on his interlaced fingers. Uh oh. Lecture time. “I’m serious. We have three weeks until the alignment takes place. That’s twenty one days.”

“More like twenty five,” I interrupted. “I brought us back a little more than three weeks. But you know, time isn’t really an issue.”

He looked at me quizzically. 

“I’m Pythia,” I reminded him. “If we’re running out of time, I can always bring us back again.”

That got a scowl. “Absolutely not.” 

I sighed. “What choice do we have, if the world is ending?”

“We’ll manage with the time we have.” Pritkin was adamant. “The further we go back, the more chance we have of fucking something up.”

He wasn’t wrong. I’d already had this thought and several others. There were now two versions of me in this time, something which Agnes had once warned me was difficult. By my birthright, I had certain advantages, but how far would they stretch? Could I have three? Four? What other complications would I run into if I tried to stay in the past such an extended period? Experimenting under these circumstances was really not something I wanted to try. 

“We’ll manage,” I agreed, because either we would or wouldn’t and I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. 

Pritkin propped his chin on his hands again and I sighed. Lecture mode reactivated. 

* * * 

His plan was simple. Step one, provisions. I interpreted the soldier talk to mean food and in my case, clothes. Step two, books. 

“Yep, definitely running short of those,” I’d said, looking pointedly at the shelves lining the walls. He’d dismissed that with an impatient wave of his hand. Apparently we didn’t have the right books and would have to go on an ‘expedition’ to get some later. I found his choice of words ominous but had refrained from asking. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know. 

Step three, research. I took that to mean ‘read ’til our eyes bled.’ 

“Have you got what you need?” Pritkin asked impatiently and I shook myself out of my reverie. 

“Nearly.” I made for an odd sight in the nearest TJ Max in my baggy shirt and rolled up sweats. Yesterday’s neat pumps with their little heels definitely did not match, so among other things, step one involved picking up shoes. I grabbed a pair of Keds and Pritkin frowned. 

“Those look too flat. Will you be able to run in them?” 

“I’m hoping I won’t have to,” I muttered and of course, he heard me. 

“You cannot expect me to discontinue our training just because of a small change in circumstances.” 

A small change, yeah, right. I don’t know why I was surprised, because he hadn’t let a little thing like death stop him from recommencing our morning agony sessions. The day after he’d come back, he’d been bouncing at my door at fuck you am, demanding to know why I wasn’t changed and ready to go. 

“If anything, continuing is more important now,” he went on sternly and I found myself kind of missing the flirty guy from earlier. At least he hadn’t wanted me to run anywhere. “Both because it is imperative that we make up for the time lost in the recent halt in your routine and because we do not know what we will be facing at the end of these three weeks. We both need to be in the best possible form.” 

I had a brief but vivid flash of mashing my face into the muscular swell of his chest like I had this morning and bit my tongue on a comment about his already perfect form. There was enough of a weird vibe between us already. I dumped the shoes into the shopping cart along with the other basics I’d picked up and moved on to the work out clothes, trying to think if I’d forgotten anything. A T-shirt caught my eye and I grinned. Pritkin would hate it. Despite our slightly limited funds, I grabbed it and added it to the cart. After all, I was paying. 

Four months of people trying to kill me in new and sophisticated ways had done nothing to lessen the instinctive paranoia instilled in me by years of fleeing Tony and although running from my problems was pretty much impossible these days, I’d been unable to break the habit of setting up emergency caches. Bus stops, train stations, unlikely hidey holes in the hotel: I had a few stashes of clothes, money and fake IDs scattered around Vegas, something which was coming in handy now that we needed money and had no easy or legal way to get it. Neither of us could touch our accounts without drawing the attention of our past selves. Or maybe just my past self, I realised, with a sudden, swooping feeling in my belly. At this point in time, Pritkin had been mouldering in hell and would shortly be dead. Which didn’t change the fact that past Cassie would come charging in like a runaway train if someone started interfering with Pritkin’s finances. My stomach clenched again. Getting him out of hell had been dicey enough the first time: I shuddered to think what would happen if I managed to change something now. 

“Is everything alright?” Pritkin, who had been stuffing my purchases into a more manly version of Mary Poppin’s bigger-on-the-inside carpet bag, was giving me a bemused look and I discovered that I’d grabbed his arm. Oops. I let go hastily, trying to think of something glib to say to cover up the pang of completely irrationally fear that had driven me to touch him and came up with nothing. Instead, to my horror, I felt a blush spread over my cheeks. 

“What the bloody hell is this?” He held up the now slightly crumpled T-shirt that I’d bought him and I was intensely grateful for the distraction. A cartoon with muscles like Schwarzenegger bared its teeth at me, over the legend, “I’d flex, but I like this shirt.” 

“Made me think of you.” I smiled innocently, blood pressure returning to normal and Pritkin scowled at the offensive slogan. 

He snorted and stuffed it in the bag. “I’m never going to wear that, you know.” 

“Not fair,” I protested, relieved to be back to our usual, snarky back and forth. “I wear all the ones you got me.” 

“That’s because you have terrible taste,” he shot back, but I could have sworn I caught a fleeting smile on his face as he turned away to sling the shopping bag over his shoulder. 

* * * 

I was completely unsurprised to discover that Pritkin shopped at Trader Joe’s and, feeling much more comfortable in my new shorts and tank top, I happily abused him for his hippy tendencies as he fussed over the organic vegetables. This was solid ground, this was the stability I’d missed while he’d been gone. 

“Planning on buying a rabbit?” I asked, as he filled the cart with an unholy amount of kale. “‘Cause I don’t eat grass.”

Gimlet eyes stared daggers at me over the top of a shelving unit stacked with ‘superfoods’. “Did you eat a single vegetable while I was away?” I opened my mouth to reply indignantly and he saw right through me. “Onion rings do not count.” My mouth snapped shut. “As I thought,” he said, and passed me a bunch of beetroot. 

Much and all as Pritkin’s perpetual badgering about what I ate and how much I slept and exercised annoyed me, some masochistic part of me had missed that too. In his own way, I knew, he was attempting to take care of me, and despite my bitching, it was actually working. Even after he’d been gone, his training had saved my life again and again, and every damn time, I’d had this secret, split second feeling that he was there, that I could hear his bossy, drill sergeant voice. I tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly taken up residence in my throat, furious with myself. What was wrong with me? I should be able to suck this up. I was the champion of sucking it up, squashing my inconvenient feelings into a neat, little box in the back of my head, but like everything to do with Pritkin, they were not cooperating. 

“I worried about that, you know.” He spoke quietly, apparently addressing the packet of fat free, sugar free and doubtless taste free muesli that he held in his hand. It took a second for me to realise he was actually talking to me.

“What?” My voice came out a little squeaky, as if distorted by the lump that would not freaking budge. 

“In Zarr Alim,” he said, presumably not wanting to say ‘hell’ in a crowded supermarket. “I knew you wouldn’t be eating properly. I kept — it bothered me.”

I stared at him, at a total loss as to what to do with this sudden and uncharacteristically personal revelation. We didn’t talk to each other like this. Not in public, not ever. We just didn’t, I thought, seized by an inexplicable panic. He put the bag back on the shelf and looked at me, waiting for an answer, his eyes stunningly, heart-stoppingly clear. 

“I was worried about you too,” I said lamely and regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. They sounded like a sop, a half-assed attempt at appeasing him and I saw in the set of his shoulders as he turned back to the rows of cereal that that was exactly how he’d taken them. I had no idea how to make this better, had no fount inside me from which to draw the right words to say. I watched him walk away from me, feeling as though my intestines had been replaced by live eels and bitterly wishing I could get a fucking grip. 

* * * 

The tiny apartment felt even smaller when we got back. I sat at the small table as Pritkin unpacked the shopping from his magic TARDIS bag, listening to him bang things around and swear to himself. He didn’t seem to be in any worse a mood than usual — in fact, he’d acted if our interlude in the breakfast aisle had never happened, which was fine by me, but I couldn’t quit thinking about it. Whenever my thoughts drifted, they returned irresistibly to that blazing, piercing look he’d given me. 

“Come on.” Pritkin strode past me into the bedroom. “I’m not putting away your clothes for you.” 

I stood in the doorway and watched as he yanked open two drawers and cleared one out for me, packing pants and shirts together in a wrinkled mess. No wonder his clothes always looked like he’d slept in them. Then he paused, staring into the drawer he’d emptied, and try as I might, I couldn’t look away from him as he picked up the pine box, moving like a man in a dream. He held it for a frozen moment, not opening it, but something in me ached at the gentle, cautious way he traced the grain of the wood.

“Are you okay?” I asked. 

He exhaled suddenly as if he’d been holding his breath, and shoved the box to the back of the now full drawer. 

“I’m fine.” He smiled at me briefly, then tossed me the bag. It was heavier than I expected and I nearly dropped it. “Get your shit sorted,” he said, back to his usual brusque self. “We’re going to have a busy night.” 

I blinked. “Uh, how so?” 

“We’re going to rob the Circle,” he called from the living room. 

Oh. 

So that was what ‘expedition’ meant. _Shit._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! Thanks for your patience guys, hope this makes up for the wait ^^

As I curled into the smallest ball possible under the hopefully solid, oak desk, I found myself composing my own obituary in the kind of manic calm that usually heralded impending death: Cassie Palmer, survived tangles with monsters, dark mages and gods only to be killed by a psychotic bookcase. Not how I’d figured I’d go. There was an almighty thud as the bookcase slammed into the desk again, jolting forward about a foot and trapping my fingers. I screamed in pain and yanked them free, trying to scramble out of the way before the next attack could come. And smacked my head hard into the desk when it came from entirely the other direction. Pritkin’s face swam before my eyes as he hauled me up by the elbows and despite the spots flaring across my vision, I could still tell he looked pissed. 

“What did I tell you about sticking close?” He gave me a little shake. Already dizzy from my head’s encounter with hard wood as he’d dragged me out from under the desk, I swayed and caught his arms for support.

“What?” I hissed, outraged. “You’re the one who dropped me off the damn altar.” 

“It’s not an altar,” he snarled. “It’s a platform.” 

* * *

_“We want to shift in here.” Pritkin tapped one of the photos spread out on his minuscule dining table. “Onto the platform at the centre of the library.”_

_I picked up the picture, a wide shot from the award ceremony I’d seen in the photo on the shelf the night before. It showed Pritkin, looking disconcertingly good in his formal, black cloak, unsmiling as Jonas shook his hand and pinned a medal on him, flanked by a bunch of equally grim looking guys in matching capes. It wasn’t a bad angle for our purposes — it gave me a decent impression of the size and dimensions of the library and, when not being used for ceremonial purposes, it would make a good landing space for what would essentially be a blind shift. Nice and flat, with a comforting lack of things for me to accidentally splice us into. Of course, none of that changed the fact that I couldn’t shift us inside a building if I didn’t know where it was located. I told Pritkin as much but he waved that away._

_“I’ll get us there. Your job is getting us inside.”_

_“And then what?” I demanded. “How are we supposed to disable the guards without changing anything? Even if we could do it without killing anybody —”_

_“There are no guards.”_

_That brought me up short. “What? You can’t seriously expect me to believe that the Circle leaves its biggest, oldest collection of magical texts just open and undefended?”_

_He grimaced. “I never said it was undefended.”_

* * * 

The library’s wards were not happy. The bookshelves rattled ominously as we walked back to the platform that I’d managed to fall off when we’d landed. It wasn’t quite fair to say Pritkin had dropped me, as I’d misjudged the distance slightly and while he’d gotten his feet on the platform when we shifted in, I’d found myself standing on empty air. Which left me plunging six feet to the floor, where I’d triggered one of the many nasty surprises the Circle had left for any nighttime intruders and had had to take cover from the suddenly homicidal shelving. 

_______He crouched in front of the stage and interlaced his fingers, offering me a makeshift step. After he’d boosted me up and I’d hauled myself awkwardly over the edge, he jumped and pulled himself after me with significantly more grace, biceps swelling and threatening to genuinely burst the sleeves of his stupid, black-ops style shirt. Which, of course, was working for me in a way I really didn’t want to examine. He jumped again, this time catching the ornate wooden scrolling on the balcony above the platform: he hung there for a moment, then lifted himself easily, like he was doing a chin up. I watched as his denim clad ass vanished over the railing and then eyed the distance from the floor to the next level with distaste._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______“I think I’d be better off just shifting,” I stage whispered, but he was already worming his way through the wooden bars and reaching down to get me._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______“Bad idea,” he said firmly. “Come on, just jump. I’ve got you.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______I took a few steps back to get a running start. “I’m not going to make it.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______“We’ll add more leg work into your training,” he suggested evilly and I glared. Over my dead body we would. If I ever had to do another leg press, I was shifting him somewhere nasty. With the pleasantly motivational thought of Pritkin slogging through some muggy swamp in the Everglades, I ran forward, launched myself as high as I could and to my surprise, actually caught his outstretched hand. There was a little grunting and sweating, and a lot of stifled swearing on my part, but with Pritkin’s help, I dragged myself up and over to land in an ungainly heap on the balcony. I struggled to my feet, feeling like my arms had been half wrenched out of their sockets and got my first good look at the library. My complaints died on my tongue as I took in the sheer expanse of it, row upon row of towering bookshelves stretching out as far as the eye could see under a cavernous, vaulted ceiling. A deep rumble echoed from the furthest dark reaches of the room, like the distant avalanche drawing closer, and the shelves started to move, sliding smoothly past each other, a gigantic labyrinth rearranging itself._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______* * *_ _ _ _ _ _ _

_“Moving bookcases don’t sound that bad,” I said and Pritkin just looked at me. I sighed. “What else is there?”_

_“The books in this library are magical in both senses of the word,” he explained. “They contain information on magic and many other things, yes, but in many cases, they also bear actual enchantments, which range from inconvenient to lethal. During the day, the library’s wards prevent most of these from activating, however, at night, these wards are lifted.”_

_Right. Because why pay guards to protect a place that was already bursting with ancient, deadly magic?_

_“So the shelves are going to try and get us lost and the books are going to attack us,” I summarised. “Is that it?”_

_Pritkin raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that enough?”_

_Actually, compared to some of the shit I’d been through to rescue him, it didn’t sound too bad. I decided to keep that one to myself, given that he’d developed a tendency to get shouty whenever we discussed my ‘unnecessary, damn-fool heroics.’ Not wanting another lecture on the importance of leaving him to die, I tried for diplomacy._

_“Does it really matter? You said you know where the books we need are, so, we get in, you point the way, I shift us past all the stuff that wants to kill-slash-maim us, we get the books and pop back out again.”_

_“I didn’t say I knew where they were,” he said, in the pedantic tone that made me want to strangle him more than usual. “I said I knew how to find them.”_

_“That’s not the same thing?”_

* * * 

________________Pritkin unfolded what looked for all the world like a map of a subway system and I frowned as I read the title upside down. I failed to see how a crumpled guide to the London underground was going to help us navigate the maze of bookcases. Then he spoke an incantation and the map rippled, a new pattern etching itself across the paper, creating a bird’s eye view of the layout of the shelves._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________________“Why is your map in disguise?” I asked as he spread it out and hunched over it._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________________“Personal maps of the Circle’s library are strictly forbidden.” He swiped with a finger and the image changed, zooming into a particular area. “Were one to fall into the wrong hands, it could allow them to penetrate our security and misappropriate valuable or dangerous texts.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________________“So … what we’re doing then.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________________“Yes, exactly,” he said seriously. I couldn’t tell whether he was kidding or not._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________________He swiped again and found a shelf that was marked in red ink. “Right.” He pointed out into the gloom. “That way.” The bookcases groaned, as though in preparation for another migration and he grimaced. “For now.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________________* * *_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_“The maze created by the shelves is in constant flux and there’s no way to predict their movements. We can’t simply shift to the right section from the centre, because we have no way of knowing if it’ll still be there when we finish the shift.”_

_Pritkin’s ‘expedition’ was sounding crazier by the second. “So you want to just wander through the murder shelves and get savaged by the books?”_

_“Not through. On.”_

_I looked at him blankly and he elaborated. “We go over the top. It’s the quickest way to move and we should be out of the range of the worst of the bespelled books.”_

_I examined the photos again, trying to gauge the distance between the rows. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to make those jumps.”_

_“You’re not going to be jumping.”_

______________________* * *_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________The first gap, from the balcony to the rows of shelves, did not actually require a shift, so long as you were crazy enough to inch your way along a very thin, ornamental ledge on the wall, clinging to the carved fleurs de lis on the wall by your fingertips and then lower yourself six feet to the surface of the closest bookcase. Pritkin went first, of course, and caught when me when my grip gave way. I landed crossways in his arms, bridal style, my shriek of surprise still ringing in the enormous, sepulchral silence of the library and he let out a heavy sigh, more resigned than anything else._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________“Did you miss the part about stealth being imperative?” His tone was acidic, but he hadn’t put me down, his strong arms were still cradling me and I just blinked at him stupidly until he set me on my feet._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________“I told you we should have just shifted,” I snapped once I was back on solid ground, or as close as you could get on top of a narrow bookshelf._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________“And I told you that you needed to conserve as much energy as possible.” Pritkin checked the map again and peered into the gloom. “We’ve got a long way to go.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________* * *_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_“How far can it be?” I protested. Pritkin’s insistence that I should go monkeying about the upper levels of the library when I could just shift was becoming a bone of contention._

_“Time and space do not have the same meaning there,” he said, brows lowered in a frustrated frown. “Think of it as being like the inside of a ley line — the energy levels are so enormous that they distort all the rules of physics.”_

_I examined the photos again but none of them gave a sufficiently wide shot of the library for me to make out the external walls._

_“How far?” I repeated._

_“On a good day?” Pritkin shrugged. “Maybe miles.”_

_“Miles?!” Okay, so that sounded a little shrill. “How many shifts are we talking about?”_

_Another helpless shrug. “I can’t give a good estimate — we might be fortunate and find the section we need close to hand, which would require no more than a few jumps. Or we might not, in which case it could be hundreds.”_

_“Hundreds.” I was gripped with a maniacal urge to laugh. “Sure, why not? Hundreds. Let’s do it.”_

______________________________* * *_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________________Even with the warning, the reality of the awkward distance we would have to travel didn’t hit me until we got going. Our progress along the narrow rows was slow, in part because, while Pritkin probably could have sprinted down them like he was on a nice, wide sidewalk, I felt kind of like I was on a balance beam. Going above a gentle trot resulted in me wobbling over the edge of a twenty foot drop that set my stomach churning violently; I suspected that barfing all over the rare books would set trigger the wards just as surely as taking a nose dive between the stacks. He kept a tight grip on my hand as we went, releasing it only to leap to the next tower of shelving, making them sway alarmingly. Which really didn’t help with my steadily worsening vertigo. I jumped the gaps myself when I could, but more often than not, I had no choice but to shift across, and although they were only little hops, the steady build up wore me out. The library stretched endlessly on and on; even when the balcony we’d started from receded into the inky darkness, the rows of shelves still continued as far as the eye could see in every direction._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________________Pritkin’s abstract talk of energy and mass and space and their mutual effects on each other had mostly gone over my head, but now I could see what he meant. The weird, spiralling arrangements of shelves gave a discomforting impression of being packed together like sardines while at the same time, being too far apart to jump the gap comfortably: I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong, but I knew if I looked at any one spot for long, it would start to pulse strangely before my eyes, like an optical illusion. Something which most definitely was not helping with my nausea. I concentrated on the back of his head instead, which was looking decidedly less spiky than normal. He hadn’t got round to cutting his hair since he got back, and it was still too long for the gel to hold in place — gravity had triumphed, for the time being. I couldn’t decide whether I liked it or not._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________________________* * *_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_“So what about when something goes wrong?” I asked._

_He twisted his fingers in his hair, eyes skimming the detailed layout in front of us. “We’re prepared for every eventuality.”_

_“Nuh-uh.” I shook my head. “Not run of the mill, ordinary wrong. I’m talking about the kind of freaky shit that only happens to me.”_

_“The setbacks no sane person would plan for because no sane person would ever have allowed them to be possible?”_

_“Yeah, those ones.”_

_He didn’t quite smile because Pritkin’s smiles were like the good china, to be taken out and dusted for special occasions only. But his eyes did crinkle in something like anticipation._

_“We’ll deal with them,” he said. “Don’t we always?”_

_____________________________________* * *_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________“Oh shiiii —”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________As it happened, our ‘setback’ could have been predicted by anyone who’d ever met me: I fell off the damn bookshelves. In my defence, the shelves, which had, up until this point, very obligingly stayed in their proper places, moved out from under me. When I was shifting._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________One minute, Pritkin was standing about three yards away, waiting for me to shift across the gap to him and the next, I was materialising to where he should have been. And finding myself standing on nothing for the second time in about half an hour. Then I was plunging into a twenty foot drop, watching the very elegant, very hard, old fashioned oak floorboards rushing up to meet me._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________Fortunately, I’d been trained for this eventuality by Pritkin himself, by the simple expedient of shoving me off a freaking cliff. I’d never had so little time to react before, but I managed to shift in midair anyway — I misjudged the distance a little, but the two foot drop I ended up with was infinitely preferable. A little winded but otherwise unharmed, I lurched to my feet and put plan B into action. We’d agreed that in the very likely occurrence of me tripping over my own two feet and ending up on the floor, where the books ran wild, the simplest solution would be for me to shift back to the top of the closest bookshelf and wait for him to come get me. However, our brilliant plan did not allow for me shifting onto empty space, yet again._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________I shifted out of my second free fall in as many minutes with even less dexterity than the first time and made an even worse mess of judging the distance. I fell about six feet and nearly concussed myself, and that was before someone shot at me. I flung myself to the floor as something whistled over my head, then recoiled before another missile could take out my ribs. Books, I realised, as I scrambled for safety. The books were launching themselves off the shelves and flying straight at me, massive, old tomes with hardback covers and enough force to break bone. I wriggled out of the way on knees and elbows and the rain of kamikaze books let up as I managed to make it out into one of the wider aisles, but no sooner had I noticed the lull, than a hulking shape came whizzing out of the gloom and nearly ran me over._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________“Shit, shit, shit!”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________It was like being caught on a freeway, only less fun. And that was before the drive-by shootings started. The bookcases came hurtling for me and as I dodged them, they sprayed a deadly volley of books at me, forcing me to contort myself hopelessly to try and evade them. Only to have to drop to the floor again to avoid yet another death-by-bookcase immediately after. I couldn’t see shit in the dark, even without my hair in my eyes but I heard it coming, the grind of wood on wood. And I did the thing I should have done in the first place and shifted. Not onto the shelves, because they moved so fast at all times that I was beginning to think they’d wised up to that — and boy howdy, I did not like the idea that the library could think — but forward, into an empty space I’d glimpsed as I’d fallen. And then into the next opening I saw beyond that and then again, because the library was definitely catching onto my game and it was coming up with some new tricks. Like jettisoning an entire case worth of books at once, creating what was essentially a battering ram, moving fast enough to shatter every bone in my body._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_____________________________________I started to shift but saw a bookshelf go barrelling into my free spot and brought myself screeching to a halt, just in time to get clipped by the barrage I’d been trying to escape, sending me sprawling, head aching and ears ringing. Before I could shift again, a glancing blow from a passing bookcase knocked me backward, driving the air from my lungs. I looked around frantically but saw all ways around me blocked by towers of wood, moving around me so fast, they nearly blurred into a solid wall. They encircled me, spinning around me like a manic carousel in the carnival of death. Hemmed in on all sides, still I crawled, my thundering heartbeat and ragged breathing ringing in my ears. Apart from the low growl of the shelving sliding over the hardwood floor and the whistle and thud of the flying books, the library was alarmingly quiet. There was a beat, a pause like an indrawn breath and if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn that the place was taking a moment to savour the kill. Then all the remaining books launched at once, a circular firing squad with me in the middle and nowhere left to go._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I'm so sorry for the massive delay! Hope the slightly longer chapter makes up for the wait.
> 
> Many thanks to pcstillz who very kindly beta'd for me xxx

Of course, nowhere left to go was not the same thing as nowhen, and I had no intention of getting crushed to death if I didn’t have to. I flung out a hand and the books stopped, hanging in midair inches from my face. I had a second to reflect on how uncomfortably close I’d cut it before the full power drain of a time freeze hit me and I doubled over, wheezing curses. I wasn’t quite tapped out just yet, but I was getting there and we hadn’t even gotten anywhere near Pritkin’s books yet.

“Crap, crap, crap,” I chanted under my breath. His whole plan hinged on me being able to stop time again, and right now that was not looking like a viable option. There was a reason I’d avoided this until the last possible second. Taking a deep breath, I shifted past the books and up on top of the deadly circle of shelves. Which were already starting to move, inching along at a snail’s pace and gradually getting faster, as my control on the spell slipped. Feeling pretty grim, I looked around for Pritkin, assuming he would be close by. Only he wasn’t.

I whipped my head around, worry flaring in my chest, but he was nowhere to be seen, no matter how much I strained my eyes. I swore again, because I knew where he had to be, where he’d probably gone as soon as I’d fallen, because he was a total ass who couldn’t resist the chance to nearly get himself killed. He had to be on the floor looking for me.  
There was no way in hell I was going back down to that death trap, and my freeze frame trick was going to give up the ghost at any second. What I needed was some sort of vantage point, somewhere safe where I could look for him without getting bludgeoned to death. I looked up and had a literal light bulb moment — there was a chandelier hanging almost directly over my head, twenty feet or so above me. It was an enormous sturdy thing, and I figured it ought to bear my weight. I felt the clench in my gut that I had come to associate with doing something so astronomically stupid I practically deserved to die, gritted my teeth, and shifted.

As I landed, there was an awful, stomach churning moment where I was fumbling for a handhold and rolling off, as the damn thing swung away from me. Until I got a leg hooked in one of the thick chains that held the tiers together and got a grip on the bottom tier with both hands. I took a couple of seconds to just hang there, breathing through my nose and concentrating very hard on not throwing up as the metal bit into my palms. Down below me, there was a loud crash as time started up again, the books viciously slamming into each other instead of me.

“Cassie!”

Now that I wasn’t hyperfocused on not dying, I finally registered the sound of Pritkin’s voice, calling for me. I spotted him right where I’d expected him to be, down among the stacks, dodging the charging bookshelves and their unlikely projectiles like a toreador dancing out of the path of an enraged bull, and bellowing my name the whole damn time. So much for stealth.

“Up here,” I yelled, which, in retrospect, was not the brightest move. Caught off guard, he looked up and instantly got blindsided by a speeding case. He went flying, smashed into a wall of shelving and landed in a limp heap on the floor. And promptly got buried under a deluge of books.

“Shit!” I shifted to him without even thinking, panic lending me speed. I saw a familiar tuft of blond hair peeking out from under a heap of dislodged paper, grabbed it and yanked. Given Pritkin’s weight, this probably would have done absolutely nothing if he hadn’t surged to his feet at the same time. He came up seething, green eyes flashing, but he didn’t stop to yell at me as I’d half expected. Instead, he slammed into me bodily, knocking me aside as another bookcase ploughed into the spot where we had been.  
We rolled, staggering back upright and I didn’t waste any more time. I grabbed a tight hold on his hand and shifted us again, back to the top of the shelves. But this time, I had a secret weapon. In my brief bird’s eye view of the library, I’d seen that the chaos was actually limited to a small enough area. Far in the distance, the stacks stood serene and undisturbed by our intrusion, giving me a safe spot to aim for at last. We landed, stumbled, and took off again: I wasn’t taking any chances, so I shifted us again and again, even as my vision started to white out and my chest started to constrict like there was an iron band squeezed around it, trusting that my luck would hold and the shelves wouldn’t move. By some miracle, they actually stayed where they were, and I got us as far from the disturbance as I could before my legs gave out and I dropped to my knees, feeling as though my bones had been liquefied. Pritkin grabbed me before I could fall off again and hauled me back to my feet. I winced, anticipating a thorough telling off.

“The what hell that bloody was?!” he snarled and for a second, I thought that I’d worn myself out to the extent that I could no longer understand English. Then he tried again and I realised that no, I wasn’t having auditory hallucinations. “The fuck what?!”

We stared at each other, and I could see my panic echoed in his eyes. Something was seriously wrong and that was before I spotted the small, paperback book that had attached itself, open, to his neck. It was squeezing rhythmically, closing a little and then opening: the slight movement gave the revolting impression that it was sucking somehow and, honestly, that was the last straw. We’d had our weird screw up — now it was time for us to pull off some death defying, fly by the seat of our pants stunt, which was both totally mad and quintessentially us. It was not the time for wannabe vampire books. I lunged forward and ripped it off him but it stuck to me, feeling sickeningly organic under my fingers.

“Gross!” I exclaimed and shook my hand until it went sailing off over the stacks, even as Pritkin made a frantic grab for it.

“Did say what it?” He grabbed me in his favourite spot and shook me. “Book what called that was?”

“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded, severely freaked out. “What’s with the word salad?”

“Book!” he roared and pointed in the direction that the paperback had fallen. “Title!”

I racked my brains, trying to recreate the image of the book latching on to his neck. There was a big, red mark where it had been and I shuddered. Most of the title had been too small for me to make out in that brief, panicked glimpse, but one word had stood out in large, bold print.

“Uh, I think it said something about grammar.”

Pritkin swore violently and I didn’t need to unscramble his tangled syntax to get the gist: we had a problem.

* * *

It turned out my notion of a vamp book wasn’t completely off, or at least, I think that was what Pritkin was trying to tell me. We were having something of a communication issue.  
“Carry which are subjects the related books to frequently enchantments their,” he said, but that made no more sense to me than the first few times he’d tried to say it. Each time, his sentences came out in a different order and with every attempt, his face got a little redder. Anymore and I half expected him to start giving off light.

“Short sentences, Pritkin, come on.” Whatever the book had done to him was less effective when there were fewer words to jumble, but he didn’t seem to appreciate the reminder. There was a vein throbbing at his temple.

“Have enchantments books,” he ground out.

“With you so far.”

“To topic related.” He spoke slowly, as though my understanding were deficient, rather than  
his speech.

I took a second to parse that. “The enchantments on the books are related to their subject matter?”

He nodded and motioned for me to continue, waiting for me to figure it out.

“That was a grammar book,” I said and light began to dawn. “So it’s taken your ability to, what, use grammar?”

“Syntax only.”

“Well that’s something,” I said. “So how do we undo the spell?”

Pritkin scowled eloquently. “Can’t.”

“What do you mean ‘can’t’?” Tendons bulged scarily in his neck and I held up my hands to ward off an explosion. “I mean, there’s no such thing as ‘can’t’. We always deal with the weird shit, isn’t that what you said? So here’s the weird shit and we’re gonna deal, because, uh, well, that’s what we do.”

I hadn’t expected that to work — Pritkin has a particularly sensitive bullshit detector — but to my surprise, he actually calmed down a little. Or at least, looked a fraction less homicidal, which was a win in my book.

“So,” I said, wracking my brains. “If we can’t undo the spell, what can we do?”

“Wait.”

I paused expectantly, but Pritkin didn’t continue. “What?” I said finally.

“Wait.”

“I am waiting!”

“No! To have wait we!”

“What?!”

He caught me by the shoulders and dragged me in until our noses were nearly touching. We were right back to Pritkin’s natural state: murderous.

“We. Must. Wait.” He bit off every word like he wished it was my head, and this close, I could see a kind of manic fire in his eyes that I hadn't seen in a long time. Against all my efforts, a hysterical giggle forced its way out of my throat.

“Still glad I busted you out of hell?”

His fingers tightened and for a moment I thought he was going to toss me off the shelves and leave me to get squished to death. But what he actually did was far more shocking, he stared at me for another furious beat and then he smiled. And let out an actual chuckle.

“Be you of death the me will,” he said, then shook his head. “You. Will. Be —”

“I got it, thanks.” Been there, done that, got the emotional scarring. His hold on my shoulders gentled and the way he was touching me now felt almost soothing. “Um, so, what are we waiting  for? Is the spell going to wear off?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank God.” I perked up considerably. “When?”

“Hours ten. About.”

“Oh shit.” And wasn’t that the freaking soundtrack to my life these days?

* * *

As Pritkin would explain later, we’d gotten off intensely lucky with the grammar spell, because no matter how inconvenient and unintentionally hilarious it may have been, it was also nicely non-lethal: we could’ve gotten a book on anatomy or poisons or any one of the hundreds of thousands of nasty spell books this place contained. But, sweet and all as it was not to be dead though, our plan was now pretty much screwed.

“I could cast the spell,” I stage whispered over my shoulder. I looked back at Pritkin and was met with a searing glare. I sighed. Say no more. It hadn’t really been a serious suggestion, but I was running out of ideas. According to Pritkin, the library’s own maintenance spells would clean up the mess we’d made and restore all the books to their proper places, leaving the Circle none the wiser to what we’d gotten up to tonight. Which was neat, but we were planning to physically remove books from the building and there was no way that would go unnoticed, so if we were to have any chance of preserving the timeline, Pritkin would have to cast a spell to fool the wards into believing that the books were still there. But he couldn’t cast jack if he couldn’t talk properly. 

A tense silence reigned as we kept on trekking over the endless stacks, moving at an agonisingly slow pace. Shifting was a no go, and walking wasn’t much better; my legs were beginning to quiver alarmingly with every step and Pritkin was pretty much tossing me from shelf to shelf because I couldn’t have jumped over a puddle at that stage, never mind a twenty foot drop. One particularly bad wobble turned into a slip that would’ve sent me headfirst off the bookcase if weren’t for Pritkin and his scary, split second reflexes. I pitched sideways, shelves and ceiling and books all spinning like I was on a carnival ride, then his hand was knotted in the back of my shirt, nearly choking me. I just hung there for a second, adrenaline flooding my system as the world kept swimming sickeningly before my eyes, the floor below seeming to lurch closer.

“That’s it,” I heard a voice say, somewhere in the distance. “I’m done. Fuck this.” It sounded kind of like my voice would sound, if I were on the edge of a nervous breakdown. 

“Easy. Breathe.” Pritkin pulled me up into his arms, his chest a warm wall against my back. “Easy.” 

I just stood there and let him hold me as I trembled because it was that or fall down again. And because his arms felt really, incredibly nice wrapped around me and no, I was not going to examine why that might be. 

“Sorry,” I said, when I trusted myself to talk without squeaking.  “You’d think I’d be used to the near death experiences by now.” Pritkin didn’t say anything and I gave into the demands of my tired muscles and let my head flop back to rest on his shoulder. “It’s just been a really long night.”

“Mm-hmm.” Apparently non verbal communication worked just fine without syntax. 

I gave myself another second to recuperate before reluctantly tugging away. Pritkin kept a hold on me as I turned to face him, presumably not trusting me to stay conscious and upright. I couldn’t exactly blame him. 

“Is there really any point in keeping this up?” I asked and got a scowl in response. “Look I know we’ve come really close, but I’m out of juice and you can’t manage even the most basic incantation. Maybe we ought to quit while we’re ahead.”

“Second no chance,” he said, looking about as frustrated as I felt.

“We won’t get a second chance?” He nodded. “But I thought you said the Circle wouldn’t notice we were here.” 

“No. They. Won’t. Be. Certain. But. Will. Suspect.”

“Crap. And I’m guessing they’ll beef up their security?” 

His answering frown said it all. Regular security had all but wiped us out. Any step up and there was no way we were getting our hands on the information that could very well save the world. 

“Close.” He pointed, indicating a spot a few rows over. “Very. Close.” 

I swallowed. It galled me to have to give up when we were a stone’s throw away from our target. But it might as well have been on the other side of the library for all the good it did us if I couldn’t stop time and he couldn’t cast the damn spell. If I hadn’t been running on empty, I could have maybe bubbled him until the enchantment ran its course, but as it was, I was all out and there was nothing - 

The perfect, shooting clarity of an idea hit me, making me catch my breath. 

“What?” Pritkin was watching me apprehensively and I opened my mouth to tell him but then closed it again. What right did I have to ask this of him? Just because his father’s interdict had been lifted didn’t mean I could just start using him as my personal battery pack. 

“What?” he asked again, more urgently. 

“There is one thing we could do.” I stopped, struggling for words, because how could I get this out without sounding like I was propositioning him? “I mean, we don’t have to, if you don’t want to, we could figure something else out -”

“Cassie!” he barked and I shut up. “What. Is. It?”

“I could speed up time, just for you, if I had the energy. But I don’t.” I couldn’t make myself look at him. “And you do.”

His eyebrows shot up as he figured it out. “Oh,” he said, and I was really starting to be impressed by the amount of expression he could cram into single syllables. “Right.”

I focused on his right ear instead of his eyes, which was a mistake because I could just about make out the flush creeping up his neck. This was just ridiculous; all it should take was one little kiss, between two grown adults who’d been in far more intimate situations than this and yet, here we were, avoiding each others’ eyes and blushing like teenagers. With a buzzing sense of unreality, I watched my hands come up to rest on his chest, my fingers hooking in the inevitable belts crisscrossing his torso. 

“So.” My lips felt parched but I didn’t know whether it’d be weirder to wet them or kiss him all dry and prickly. “How do you want to —”

I was cut off by his hand cupping my face, his mouth closing over mine. For a second, it was gentle, almost reserved and I thought, hey, this isn’t so bad, I can handle this. Then Pritkin’s restraint broke and what had been a cautious pressure became an onslaught, became his fingers knotted in my hair and my arms winding around his neck, became both of us forgetting to breathe, became the honeyed taste of his power flowing into my mouth with each slide of his tongue. I forgot all the barriers I’d erected, the boundaries in my head that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cross, and just gave into the savage yearning that I’d been repressing for so long. It was all him, so much of him, and I wasn’t sure whether I was drowning or just breathing at last. 

He must have been backing me up, although I don’t think either of us realised it until my foot suddenly found empty air, sending a jolt of alarm through me, strong enough to lift the haze of hunger the kiss had triggered. No, the power exchange. It was just the extra energy, I told myself, even as I clutched him, plastered against him like a clinging vine. It had affected me like this before, a mind blowing high from the world’s best drug. We stared at each other for a shocked moment, still locked in each other’s arms, still closer than we’d been in the entire week since he’d come back. 

I cleared my throat. “Uh, your hand is, um . . .” 

He let go of my ass like he’d been scalded and stepped away. “So? Now what?” 

I looked around hastily, because it would be just my luck for the damn bookcase to have sidled off into the night while I had my tongue down Pritkin’s throat, but the lay of the land remained the same as before we’d kissed. Only now I was full to bursting with sparkling, surging power. 

“Hop on,” I said, holding out my hand. 

* * *

Being able to shift again was a massive relief; one tiny little jump and there we were, after literal hours of pursuit, on top of ‘Proto-Magical Civilisations, D-G. I couldn’t help but feel it was something of an anti-climax. I grinned at Pritkin, too flush with the warm, tingly sensation running through me to keep feeling embarrassed. 

“We’d probably better sit for this,” I told him, crossing my legs and making myself as comfortable as was possible on a wooden shelf about two feet wide. He followed suit with considerably less ease: big, heavily muscled legs and massive boots weren’t always an advantage. 

Facing him, I felt a thread of apprehension creep in, even around the buzz his energy had given me. The last time I’d tried something like this I’d unmade a vampire, and started a chain of events which had done possibly irreparable damage to my relationship with Mircea. Understandably, I wasn’t keen to try it again. I looked up to heaven for inspiration and saw, through the gothic windows high overhead, that the sky was beginning to lighten- heavy grey streaked with pale blue. We were pretty much all out of time. Swallowing my fear, I closed my eyes and reached for my power.

With Jules, I’d seen his life as a book, a short paperback matching his comparatively brief time in the world. Pritkin’s life on the other hand, was longer and far more ancient. In my mind’s eye I saw a heavy tome with a cracked, leather cover and a massive, uneven sheaf of yellowed paper. I extended a tiny tendril of power and the book blew open, the pages flipping as though in a strong wind, no matter how I tried to reduce it to a gentle breeze. With a massive effort, I slowed them down as the writing began to dwindle, until I finally came to a page that was blank except for a slick of shimmering, glistening ink reaching its creepy tendrils all over the stiff parchment of Pritkin’s life. Apparently, I’d found the spell. Now for the tricky part.

Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Luckily for Pritkin, I’d developed a few new tricks since de-vamping Jules. Like a knack for visualising my power. I retreated inwards and found myself submerged in that deep, shining sea, surging around and through me. I breathed slower and called, lightly as a summer breeze, and my power answered; one tiny strand weaving its way towards me. I caught it in the firmest mental grip I could manage, although that was tenuous at best. It was kind of like trying to pick up a greased snake in one of those rigged, arcade claw machine games, only without hands. It squirmed and shimmied in my grasp, but I held on grimly and began to shape it, splitting it lengthwise and prying the sides apart until I had the metaphysical equivalent of tweezers. 

A few minutes later, I was starting to feel like my brain was sweating. I’d been wrong before, this was the tricky part. The page I was trying to turn over with my makeshift pincers slipped away every time I tried to get hold of it, and even when I did get a grip on it, I never got it all the way over without freaking dropping it again. I resisted the urge to just snatch the damn thing in my hands and rip it right out. But that felt like a Bad Idea, capitals intended. Then from what felt like a hundred miles away, I felt an oddly familiar touch, a pressure on my hand. Foreign fingers curled around my own, fingers that I’d know if I were blindfolded in a darkened room. _Pritkin._ I exhaled and reached again, the steadiness of his hand on mine reflected by the steadiness of my grip, as I caught the page and turned it over, obscuring the ugly blot on the other side.

When I opened my eyes, Pritkin wasn’t holding my hand any more - he was holding me by the shoulders and shaking me urgently. 

“Cassie? Cassie?!” 

“I’m up, I’m up!” I said stupidly, feeling woozy and wobbly, like I’d run up a mountain. Maybe Pritkin hadn’t given me as big of a hit as I’d thought. I blinked at him, trying to clear the fog from my brain and his face swam into focus, twisted into its usual scowl. Maybe I’d imagined that phantom touch - he looked pissy and frustrated, and not at all like someone who’d just indulged in some tender hand holding. 

“You stopped breathing,” he said accusingly, like I’d done it on purpose. 

“Well, excuse the hell out of me,” I said. This was typical in every way: I gave him back his ability to talk and he used it to tell me off. 

* * *  
My heights issue was definitely getting worse. I toed the edge of the shelf, looking down and tried not to lose my dinner. Not that it’d be that great a loss - Pritkin’s cooking left a lot to be desired. 

“Ready?” he asked.

I swallowed. “I think I just need another minute.” Or twenty. 

“You’ve had about five minutes worth of ‘another minutes.’” 

“If I could just get aagggh!”

In what was becoming one of the staples of our relationship, Pritkin had shoved me off and jumped after me. He grabbed me as we fell and snapped his shields into place in time to absorb the shock as we crash landed. The library’s reaction was instantaneous, and I screamed as a volley of books came straight at my head. Only to freeze as I reached out with what was left of my power and stopped time. 

Maybe borrowed energy doesn’t last as long, I thought vaguely, as my knees slowly buckled. Or maybe Pritkin hadn’t had that much to give. I sank to the floor and watched him rush up and down, snatching books from the shelves and stuffing them feverishly into his bigger-on-the-inside bag, chanting all the while. My vision began to swim with black spots and a massive gilt and leather affair, hanging on a level with my head, started edging gently towards me, spine first. I should probably do something about that, I realised, and slumped over backwards. There. Nailed it. 

“What the hell are you doing on the floor?” Pritkin dumped the bag alarmingly close to my head, and I swear the wooden boards my face was smushed against rattled. How many books did he have in there?! 

“Cassie?” He crouched down beside me, getting an arm under my shoulders and hauling me upright. Which left me nose to nose, so to speak, with the pointed, gilded corner of the leather bound book. I knew there was a reason I’d liked the floor. Pritkin shoved it out of the way, but there were more coming and his shields would only hold out for so long. I took a deep breath and pulled myself together.

“Did you get everything?” I croaked. 

“Not everything,” he said grimly. “Hardison’s Fey-Celt Studies is missing and the Etymology of Ancient Alorestri Dialects by Cokeley -”

“Pritkin!” I knotted my fingers in his shirt and yanked him close to me. “Are. We. Done. Here?” 

He blinked at me, the early dawn light from the high windows sifting over his face and glistening on his pale eyelashes, as he gave me another of those split-second, heart-stopping looks. Maybe this was a little too close, after the incident earlier with the kissing, and the groping that I was definitely consigning to the repressed memories department. 

“Yes.” He sounded a little hoarser than normal. 

“Good.” I resolutely refused to deal with the weird intensity of the moment we’d just had, on the grounds that I was too damn tired for emotions. “Then hang on.” 

And I shifted.


	6. Chapter 6

When you're in pain, there comes a point where you just stop caring. You forget who you were before, you forget why you were fighting, you forget everything except please, make it stop. I slumped face first onto unforgiving tarmac, already warm and sticky from the early morning sun and waited for the end.

"Come on," barked my torturer. "Only ten more, get moving."

"Leave me to die," I mumbled into the ground.

A sneaker-clad foot nudged me sharply in the ribs.

"Up."

"Noooo."

An impatient sigh rushed out overhead and a shadow moved in front of my eyes as Pritkin crouched beside me.

"Cassie," he said, in the crisp tones that usually preceded shouting. "You've done five press ups. You have ten more to do. We're not leaving until you do them, so get. Moving."

I pushed lightly with my hands, still arranged loosely in push up position and made a half hearted attempt to get myself up off the ground. Then I flopped right back down.

"Cassie!" Yep, here came the shouting. Well, he could yell all he wanted, but that still didn't change the fact that after last night's rumble in the book jungle, and the three mile sprint he called a 'light jog', I was no more capable of doing ten more push ups than I was of taking flight.

I slumped further into the lumpy ground, on the theory that if I was going to get bawled out, I might as well be comfortable, but the expected deluge of bitching from above never came.

"If you do them properly, we'll go for coffee afterwards."

I snorted, remembering the 'picnic' in the Rocky Mountains. I knew better than to fall for this one.

"I'm buying," he said, coaxing. Which only made me more suspicious.

"I want a frappuccino." Because, hell, if we were going to enter the realms of fantasy, we might as well go the whole hog.

"No." There was a lingering pause, broken only by the sounds of traffic filtering into the scrubby, little park where we were training. I waited stubbornly, not caring how long it took, because I wasn't getting up for anything less than -

"Iced coffee," Pritkin suggested and I cracked one eye open. His silhouette blocked out the sun, the light filtering through his sweaty hair to give him a crazy, spiked halo of gold.

"With cream?"

"No."

"Syrup?"

"Definitely not."

"Extra large."

He sighed again and I smiled smugly, sensing defeat.

"Fine. But you have thirty seconds."

I whined pathetically.

"29," he said mercilessly. "28. 27 . . ."

* * *

"You take me to all the nicest places," I said sardonically. The tiny café that Pritkin had insisted we jog to reminded me strongly of the greasy diner where we'd once gone for pizza.

"The coffee's good," he replied, refusing to rise to the bait.

"And it doesn't have any dragons," I muttered, earning myself a sharp, warning look. I rolled my eyes and followed him to the counter, only to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the shiny surface of the espresso machine. Damn, I looked rough.

"You know what," I said, sidling in the direction of the restrooms. "You order. I'll be right back."

The small, cracked mirror over the bathroom sink showed me a clearer version of the big ol’ bundle of yikes I'd seen outside: flushed, blotchy cheeks, ocean-sized sweat patches on a grubby t-shirt and what strongly resembled a bird's nest on top of my head. Swearing, I mopped my face with dampened tissues and attempted to finger comb the worst of the knots out of my hair. Just this once, I wished I could go out without looking like a disaster victim.

In my defense, I hadn't been one hundred percent with it when Pritkin had dragged me out of bed this morning. Apart from feeling like I'd gone a few rounds with a prize fighter the night before, I'd slept terribly, plagued by nightmares of fanged books that merged confusingly with Mircea's disappointed face. One guess what that was about. It was bad enough having the real deal ragging on me about Pritkin, without my subconscious getting in on the act too. I worked my fingers through a particularly stubborn tangle with a little more force than was wise, all the arguments I'd been making to myself over and over echoing in my head.

_It was an emergency._

I snorted. My whole life was a damn emergency; it hardly constituted an excuse anymore.

_We had no choice._

Yeah, that'd go down swell. I gritted my teeth and yanked a knot apart violently, making my eyes sting with tears.

_It was just one kiss._

Only it really wasn't, was it? What had begun as a freaky, never-to-be-repeated one-off was starting to become a regular occurrence. And now that Pritkin no longer had any limitations on how he used his power, what was to stop us from exchanging energy every time one of us ran low? It would be undeniably useful and maybe I could have justified it, if my interest in his abilities had been purely practical. But every damn time we kissed or got close, my reaction to him became stronger, to the extent that it was beginning to frighten me.

I leaned forward until my forehead touched the cool surface of the mirror, my hands clutching the edge of the sink. It was no use pretending that things were the same as they'd always been. Pritkin's power gave us a tactical advantage but it also had the potential to bring our relationship to whole new heights of weird. If I wanted to fix things with Mircea, I was going to need a strategy for this. I was going to have to get things under control.

* * *

When I went back out into the café, I probably still looked like a mess, but I was a mess with inner poise and that was what counted. Or at least, that was what I told myself as I watched Pritkin explain to the bemused barista that yes, he really did want four shots of espresso in the one drink. I took a gulp of my iced coffee and grimaced. That rat bastard had tried to slip me skim milk instead of full fat. Well, I'd show him. I took advantage of his distraction and dumped a diabetes-inducing quantity of sugar into my drink.

There. Bliss. I sipped slowly and savoured what was probably going to be my last moment of peace for about three weeks, closing my eyes in satisfaction. When I opened them again, Pritkin was flirting with the waitress.

I did a double take and then went ahead and took a triple while I was at it, because, what? Maybe my brain had finally cracked under the stress and started producing crazed hallucinations. Maybe I was still asleep and this had all just been another bizarre dream. I pinched myself but nothing changed. I was still sitting in a small, rundown coffee shop, with a mug of cold, milky heaven in my hand, watching the barista smile and toss her hair as she chatted to Pritkin. And he was chatting right back, one of his not-quite-smiles tugging at his lips. It wasn't fair, I thought vaguely, that I looked like a hobo with a hygiene problem after a workout while he somehow hit that scruffy-but-hot, macho-man vibe. Apparently, Coffee Shop Girl was digging it too because she was leaning in a little closer than necessary to pass Pritkin his heart attack in a cup, letting their fingers brush 'accidentally' as she handed it over. He lingered for a moment and a hot, stinging wave suddenly rippled from my stomach into my chest. Heartburn, I told myself, groping for my packet of Tums and conveniently forgetting that I hadn't eaten in a good twelve hours.

The almost smile was still clinging faintly when he dropped into the seat opposite me. I fixed my eyes on the melting ice cubes in my coffee, clinking against each other as I gently swirled the drink.

"Too sweet for you?" Something about his caustic tone suggested that he hadn't been quite as oblivious to the sugar as I'd thought.

"Just right actually," I said, aiming for blithe insouciance but landing somewhere in the region of pointed bitterness. Shit.

Pritkin looked at me sharply. "What's wrong?"

I bristled at his demanding tone. "Oh I don't know, maybe it's the dehydration on top of the sleep deprivation -” I hushed my voice to an angry hiss “- on top of getting beaten up by a damn library last night!" 

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Sleep deprivation?"

Oh crap. Trust Pritkin to zero in on exactly the part I didn't want to talk about.

"Why didn't you sleep?"

Right then, I hated for him for the concern in his voice. "Bad dreams," I said brusquely, knowing I was being petty and ridiculous and still completely unable to stop myself.

He leaned in and lowered his voice. "Did you see something?"

I shook my head. "Not those kind of dreams."

"Then what?"

I suppressed a growl of frustration, exhaling hard through my nose instead. He was like a dog with a bone.

"Can you drop it, please?" Again, breezy just wouldn't come; why the hell did I sound so shrill? This wasn't me.

Pritkin opened his mouth to respond, then stopped, as the waitress descended on us in a cloud of what smelled like jasmine and plunked an enormous, gooey brownie in front of him.

"On the house," she said with a wink and sashayed off, leaving Pritkin frowning and me gaping. I had to give it to her, it took some neck to walk up to a man sitting with another woman and hit on him that blatantly. Then again, I thought with a sudden plunging sensation in my midriff, we didn't look like a couple; she probably just thought he was taking the local bag lady for coffee out of the kindness of his heart.

With a sigh, Pritkin shoved the plate towards me. I blinked at him.

"Go on," he said. "I'm certainly not going to eat it."

It's hard to hold a grudge when your mouth is full of chocolate. I shovelled in a massive bite and felt some of my peevishness ease away. Low blood sugar, that must have been why I was acting so weird. 

“This meal-skipping business has got to stop,” I said, accidentally spraying Pritkin with crumbs. 

He brushed them off, looking more amused than disgusted. “I keep telling you, you need to eat more protein.”

I rolled my eyes. "Here we go."

"Don't give me that look. Running out of energy is your most frequent problem -"

"Actually," I interjected, sotto voce. "I think psychos trying to kill me is my most frequent problem."

"And high energy, slow release foods are your best chance at avoiding burn out."

"Or I could just carry those little glucose tablets around." That earned me a glower. "Besides, are you seriously gonna keep this health food stuff up now that you don't need to anymore?"

His scowl deepened. "Don't need to?"

"Well, you know." I gestured airily with my fork. "You don't have to compensate for that power loss anymore."

"No." He was looking at me strangely. "I suppose I don't."

I waited but he didn't elaborate. I concentrated very hard on finishing my brownie, trying to ward off the uncomfortable feeling that I’d crossed a line. 

"We should be getting back," he said finally, swishing the dregs of his coffee around the cup and avoiding my eyes. "We have work to do."

"Sure," I said, more resigned than frustrated. As the reigning champ in the 'dodging personal questions' world series, I could hardly blame Pritkin for doing the same. I scooped the last of the brownie into my mouth, reached for the serviette on the plate to wipe my mouth and paused.

"I think this is for you." 

This time my voice didn't betray me; it barely wobbled as I held the paper towel out to him. Pritkin accepted it after a moment’s hesitation, eyeing me as though waiting for a punch line. Unfortunately, the joke was on me this time. I saw surprise shoot across his face, before careful blankness replaced it. For a frozen second, he stared at the note the waitress had left him, a neatly printed phone number and a cute “Call me,” followed by a love heart. Then he crumpled it up and stuffed it in his pocket; I guess that answered part of my question at least.

We walked back to the apartment because according to Pritkin, I needed to cool my muscles down, although I was beginning to suspect that he just liked to watch me suffer. The silence between us weighed on me, heavier than the stifling desert heat. Pritkin scowled into the middle distance as we walked and my tongue was burning with all the questions I wanted to ask him. What he was thinking about? Why he wouldn't talk to me? Was he going to call the Coffee Shop Girl with her pretty smile and long, dark hair?

And then there was the question I didn’t even want to ask myself: how would I feel if he did? 

I was afraid that I knew. I couldn’t fight off thoughts of him kissing her with that fierce, demanding hunger I knew too well, images that made my stomach boil so violently, even I couldn’t pass it off as heartburn. I was jealous. How could I be jealous? Jealousy meant attachment, meant emotional investment, meant all the things I’d religiously avoided since I was old enough to understand loss. Which, at Tony’s, hadn’t been that old. But then again, Pritkin had never met a rule that he hadn’t wanted to break. 

Maybe that had been why he’d been attracted to me in the past, back when his interdict and my involvement with Mircea had probably made me the ultimate temptation - constantly present and totally off limits. Of course, I was still involved with Mircea, I remembered with a painful squirm of my insides. So now, on top the jealousy, I also felt like cheating scum. 

The worst part of it though, the bit that made me feel like a real, pathetic idiot, wasn’t the jealousy or even the borderline infidelity, although I didn’t exactly feel great about those either. It was that I hadn’t even considered this. When I’d been worrying about what the end of Pritkin’s feeding ban might mean for us, I’d never thought for a second that he might want to feed on anyone other than me. And that said something about me, something about the way I thought of Pritkin that I just could not bring myself to acknowledge. 

Ultimately, I had no right to hold him back, no matter how much some nasty, selfish part of me might want to (and as that was the same part that bitterly regretted ever giving him the number, I figured it wasn’t to be trusted anyway). I'd done the right thing, I reminded myself, casting a sidelong glance at Pritkin. He looked as broody as I felt and I clenched my fist in my pocket to resist the urge to reach over and smooth away the crease between his brows. I had no right, I told myself again. No right to him at all beyond a Pythia's claim of loyalty from her servant.


	7. Chapter 7

Deny, compartmentalize, repress, the patented, Cassie Palmer triad of coping mechanisms; by the time I'd gotten out of the shower, brushed my hair, and dressed to incapacitate if not to kill, I'd successfully convinced myself that I didn't care about The Coffee Shop Incident and wedged my disturbed feelings into some deep corner of my mind, never to see the light of day again. I hoped.

Pritkin was already hip deep in books when I came out - literally, he was surrounded by great, tottering piles of them. He gestured for me to sit down and I pulled up the only other chair, close but not too close. The sensation of creeping nausea that followed was instantaneous, accompanied by an uneasy prickle wriggling up my spine.

"I thought we agreed it was best to hide that thing." I regarded the stone in the centre of the table with distaste. In the few days since I'd last seen it, its unpleasant aura had definitely intensified.

Pritkin grimaced. "While we were assembling resources, yes. But now we have no choice but to examine it."

I prodded it with a pen. "Goodie."

That earned me a sigh. "Cassie, don't provoke the evil artefact."

I put down the pen, because yeah, this wasn't really the time for jokes.

"So, give it to me then." I looked at Pritkin expectantly and he arched an eyebrow. "Explain to me how we're going to succeed where every expert the Senate could bribe or bully into looking at this thing failed."

A hint of a smile lightened his eyes and he leaned forward, looking pleased with himself. 

"Because we know something they don't."

"We do?"

He pushed the stone towards me, angling it so that I could see the runes more clearly.

"Do you see anything familiar?"

"The rock that's been haunting my nightmares for the last week," I groused.

Pritkin scowled at me. "You need to take this seriously. Look at the runes, Cassie."  
He shoved it practically under my nose and I spread my hands helplessly. "I am looking, but I don't know what you expect me to say, it's just a bunch of scratches."

He put down the rock and picked up a piece of paper. "How about now?"

The drawing on it was crude, just a long, narrow oblong with the runes from the stone copied out along its length, giving an impression of three dimensions by curving out of sight.

"I don't see . . ." I trailed off, tilting my head to view it sideways. Actually that was ringing a bell.

"The Skylord's staff," said Pritkin and I blinked at him stupidly.

"What does that old relic have to do - oh." I shut up abruptly and Pritkin's smile actually snuck out of hiding for a second. He looked smug and I didn't blame him. A relic, millennia old when human civilization was in its infancy. Preserved by the Fey, covered in ancient runes - it all made sense, the staff and the rock had to be connected. I hadn't exactly seen the thing under ideal circumstances, but now as I forced myself to think back, to visualise, I thought that maybe the markings on the staff had been the same.

"But how did you remember any of that?" I asked, confused. "Pritkin, that was hundreds of years ago."

He coughed, smugness gone, replaced by something that might have been embarrassment on any other man. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that … incident a good deal recently.” 

“Oh yeah?” Despite my resolution to ignore all Pritkin-related feelings, I couldn’t help perking up a little. “Thinking what?”

“That’s not -” he broke off and started shuffling the notes he’d already made. “The point is that if the staff and the stone are connected, as I am firmly convinced they are, we have a means of narrowing our search parameters, which the experts contacted by the Senate did not have.” 

I hesitated, biting my lip. 

“What?” he asked. 

“It’s just … narrowing down is all very well and good but, what if we miss something? I mean, this is all guess work, neither of us remember the staff that well.” I met his eyes. “We can’t risk gambling on this, Pritkin.” 

“It’s not just the runes,” he insisted. “It’s a logical association. If we can assume that the legends of the staff became conflated with stories of King Arthur’s sword, then we can also assume that legends of a stone associated with that sword might have become conflated with legends of this stone.” 

“Might have?” 

He threw his hands up in frustration. “All right, it’s a gamble. But Cassie, we’re trying to decode a script older than hieroglyphics in a matter of weeks. There is no room for playing it safe here.” 

I sighed. Playing it safe wasn’t exactly my style these days anyway. “Okay. So where do we start?” 

* * *

Get up, run a few torturous laps of the block with Pritkin, get home, eat, read ‘til my eyeballs itched, eat, chug coffee, read some more, eat, read, sleep, repeat; the days took on a monotonous regime that reminded me of that feverish, thankfully brief period of my life when I had frantically searched for a way to escape the geis. The perpetual haze of dust getting right to the back of my throat, the tension headaches brought on by squinting at tiny, damn near illegible text for hours on end, the constant, nagging anxiety that we were never going to find anything - it was all horribly familiar, only now the stakes were immeasurably higher. Back then, I’d just been fighting for my life and Mircea’s, but this time the whole world was at stake. And time was running out. I could almost feel it dribbling between my fingers like wet sand - some Pythia I was, I thought bitterly. 

The nasty sensation of overwhelming time pressure wasn't helped by the countdown Pritkin had put up on the wall - he'd stuck notes and strings everywhere like some sort of mad conspiracy theorist and there, in the middle of it all, he'd drawn a crude kind of calendar in thick, red pen. As the days went by and he kept marking them off, I found myself wishing that he'd chosen any other colour. The closer the numbers got to one, the more the ink looked like blood. 

* * *  
“Coffee?” 

“Huh?” I tore my eyes from the looming countdown - 17 days to go - and Pritkin waggled the coffee pot at me. 

“Do you want more coffee?” he asked, enunciating with exaggerated clarity. I flipped him off. “Fine.” He headed into the kitchenette. “More for me.”

“Don’t you dare, you’ve had two pots already!” 

“We’ve had two pots,” he called, over the clattering and rustling noises that definitely signified coffee-making. 

I sighed and let my head slowly sink to rest on the massive, dusty book I’d wrestling with all afternoon. “I don’t know why I bother,” I mumbled.

This was another thing that hadn’t changed since the days of the geis; Pritkin still drove me crazy at all times. I closed my eyes and tried not to inhale fossilised dust mite husks. I was so tired that a thirty second nap on a paper pillow actually sounded like it might be worth the subsequent, dust-induced asthma attack. 

Footsteps behind me and a tempting aroma signaled Pritkin’s return, with coffee; he leaned over me to fill up my cup and the heat of his body raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Or maybe that was the spark of electricity that seemed to hum under my skin whenever we got close these days. He paused, still hovering over me and breathed in as though to speak. Then he rested his hand lightly on my shoulder, just a moment’s touch, a brief, firm squeeze. I felt a surge of warmth and peeled my face off the yellowed pages. I shot him a quick glance, wondering for a second if he’d given me a little jolt of energy, if he could pass it on to me as easily as that. Or maybe the coffee was just so horrendously strong that the fumes alone were waking me up. I took a sip and grimaced. It was a definite possibility. 

“You make the worse coffee in the world.” 

“Make your own then.” 

“Nah. I kinda missed your shitty coffee.” 

I couldn’t tell, because his nose was almost buried in his notes, but it looked like one corner of his mouth quirked into a smile. 

* * *

Okay, so it wasn’t always terrible. There were times when perversely, it was almost fun. Even the ruins of a Welsh monastery on a wet, blustery afternoon had its bright points. 

“Is there any difference between summer and winter over here?” I complained, pushing my damp hair out of my eyes. Even within the shelter of the old church’s broken walls, I was getting soaked to the skin. 

“The rain is warmer.” Pritkin was crouching down to examine the faded markings on a weathered stone set below what had once been an altar, and I couldn’t tell from his bland tone alone if he was messing with me. I had my suspicions though. 

“Any luck?” I squatted beside him, shivering and rubbing my chapped hands together. 

“Just another tombstone, I think.” He sighed in frustration and I echoed it. Yet another dead end then. The disappointment was all the harder to bear because the lead had sounded so promising. Pritkin had set me to look for historical records of the stone that had held Arthur’s sword, while he investigated the linguistic side of things, and I’d eventually turned up a convincing report of a group of medieval monks who’d preserved the stone as a relic in their church. We’d come here looking for a stone inscription which supposedly described the origins of the Lock but despite the fact that Pritkin was certain we were in the right place, there was no trace of any writing anywhere in the ruins of the chapel, beyond a few graves. 

“Maybe the records were wrong,” I said. “This was a long shot anyway.” 

Pritkin stood and scanned the ground again, brow furrowed. “Maybe. But we had confirmation of its existence from multiple sources.”

“It probably got moved. Or destroyed,” I said. “It’s been a long time.” 

He grunted. “Let’s go talk to the security guard.” 

I grimaced but followed him out onto the exposed hilltop. The wind chill hit me instantly and if this was warm rain, I’d hate to be out in the cold stuff. The security kiosk we’d passed at the bottom of the hill on the way in was barely visible through the grey sheets of water billowing from the sky and I set my teeth as I started heading back down the squelching stream of mud that passed for a walkway. Pritkin surprised me, first by pausing to wait for me and then again by reaching out and putting his arm around me. The cold sting of the wind-born rain stopped instantly and I realised he’d wrapped his shields around us both like a second skin. 

“Sorry,” he said. “This is hard to do if we’re not touching.”

“Right. Thanks.” I was too grateful for the respite from the cold and the warmth of his body to bitch about him not having done this earlier. He held onto me all the way down the slippery path to the booth, and after lurching awkwardly a couple of times, I slipped my arm around his waist. To balance, I told myself. I would have believed it, if it hadn’t been for the wrenching sense of loss when I had to let go at the bottom of the hill. 

* * *

When we got back, the security guard’s singularly unhelpful remarks - “No, he’d never heard of a stone with any funny writing on it in or near the chapel. No, there had never been any kind archaeological excavation on this site. No, there were no local legends tying the monastery to King Arthur in any way.” - went up on ‘dead ends’ section of Pritkin’s wall of conspiracy theories. He called it the ‘exhausted avenues of investigation’. I called it what it was: more precious time wasted. Right beside it, the countdown’s red ink glared at me: 11 days to go. 

* * * 

“I have something.” The note of excitement in Pritkin’s voice dragged me out of a stupefied trance that had had me reading and rereading the same line of an ancient textbook on Arthurian legend for a good ten minutes. 

“Yeah?” 

He turned the book around to show me - it was one of our newer acquisitions, which is to say it was about fifty years old instead of two hundred - but all I could see on the page he was pointing at was a faded black and white photo of what appeared to be a pile of rocks. I was getting real sick of rocks. 

“They’re not rocks, they’re tablets,” said Pritkin when I told him as much. “A collection of Sumerian cuneiform tablets in the British Museum in London.” 

“And?” I said impatiently. 

“They were recovered at a dig in ancient Roman site in Caerleon and for the most part, they seem to have been brought as curiosities by travelling soldiers, however, this particular tablet-” he jabbed his finger at a nondescript lump of rock, indistinguishable from all the others as far as I could tell “-was carved from sandstone, rather than molded from clay, as with most Sumerian tablets, and there is was also a certain degree of controversy as to whether the markings were actually cuneiform, as they couldn’t be deciphered-”

“Pritkin!” I broke in. “Cut to the chase.” 

He sighed. “The tablet is most likely Welsh in origin and I believe the markings are the same as or related to the runic system for which we are searching.”

“Well, okay, that sounds good,” I said cautiously. “Can you use them for comparison?”

“No. The picture isn’t good enough. I need to see the original.” 

I put my head in my hands. “Pritkin, we have eight days left. Do we really have time for more field trips?” 

“This one won’t take long,” he swore. “The tablet should still be in storage in the British Museum so all we have to do is-” 

“No.” I said firmly. “Absolutely not. We are not breaking into the British Museum.” 

* * *  
British Museum, staff only, read the sign. 

“I want it noted that I hate you,” I hissed. Pritkin made a slashing motion with his hand that could either have meant ‘shut the hell up’ or ‘the feeling is mutual’ and continued jimmying the door. I went back to what I was supposed to be doing, namely keeping an eye out for security guards, but all I saw was a bunch of spookily lit display cases, full of artefacts with magical signatures strong enough that I could sense them without having to concentrate. 

“They really just leave this stuff lying around in a museum where any norm could grab them?” I murmured. 

“The museum has been covertly run by the Circle since shortly after its initial establishment,” said Pritkin tersely. “Norms are inevitably going to discover magical objects - sometimes it's easiest to hide them in plain sight, under magical defences.” 

And that explained the difficulty he was having with the door. If I focused I could see the faint glistening strands of the spell holding the door shut, wavering and snapping under Pritkin's assault.

He huffed in satisfaction as he finally got the door open and I followed him into a narrow corridor which was distinctly less impressive than the museum’s stately public side. Doors lined the sides and adjoining passages branched off in every direction. The place was like a maze and I'd quite enough of getting lost lately.

“How are we going to find this thing?” I asked. 

“I've been here before,” he told me, striding confidently in what I hoped was the right direction. “I can't imagine the filing system’s been changed much since then. They're a little resistant to change here.” 

I’d believe it, I thought, glancing at the fifties era linoleum and paint job and walked right into Pritkin’s back. 

“What are you-”

He grabbed me and clapped a hand over my mouth and I kicked out reflexively, catching him in the shin. Serves you right, I thought viciously. Even if I was kind of into the grabbing. 

“There’s someone here,” he breathed, his lips right against my ear. My heart thudded in my chest, the adrenaline in my system intensifying the intoxicating sense of his closeness. 

“Security guard?” I twisted my head to whisper back. Kissing distance, the irresistible thought occurred.  
“No. In one of the offices.” He hadn’t let go of me, but his hands had moved from restraining to just holding, one resting on my stomach, the other on my shoulder. It was far too intimate for the lines I’d drawn in my head; it felt far too good. 

I swallowed and stepped away. “I can shift us past if I can see where we’re going.” 

He nodded and melted into the shadows, jerking his head for me to follow. When we rounded the corner, a bright shaft of yellow cut through the dim, emergency lighting, spilling through the frosted window in an office door. I grabbed Pritkin’s hand, ready to shift, when suddenly, he snorted and let go. 

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s just Bernie.”

“Who?” 

He motioned for me to be quite as we crept down the hall, past the door and around the next corner. “Bernard Aswick,” he continued as if he’d never left off. “Been here since the 1940s. Britain’s foremost authority on magical artefacts. He’s a genius, in his own way, but you could drop a bomb outside his office and he wouldn’t notice. He won’t be a problem for us.” 

“If you say so.” I had too much experience with Jonas to take the harmless old man act at face value. Pritkin stopped at another door, paused to listen for a second and then set to work on the locking spell. After a minute, the door opened with a click and I found myself looking into a room much larger than the dimensions of the corridor and the neighbouring doors had suggested, lined with rows and rows of shelves holding hundreds of identical looking cardboard boxes. A feeling of creeping cold edged its way down my spine as we walked along the rows; the ball of light Pritkin had conjured in his hand bounced with every step, making the shelves look as though they were lurching towards us. 

“You’re sure they’re not gonna attack?” I asked after a while. He laughed softly and I grimaced. I hadn’t entirely been joking. The library incident had left me paranoid. It didn’t help that we seemed to be walking up and down the same two rows over and over. 

“Are we lost?” I asked suspiciously. 

“We’re not lost,” said Pritkin grimly. “But the tablet is.” He paused and held the light up to the tiny labels marking the boxes. “It should be here, according to the registration number I found for it. See these final numbers here after the full stop? Those are the object numbers. The tablet is number 98, but these run straight from 97 to 99. It’s missing.” 

We both stared hopelessly at the spot where number 98 should have been and then jumped out of our skins when the lights suddenly came on. 

“Oh shit!” I grabbed Pritkin’s hand, ready to shift us the hell out of there but he pulled away. 

“Wait a second,” he whispered. 

“Hello?” called a cracked, quavery voice. “Who’s there?”

Pritkin started heading for the door and I grabbed his arm. “You’d better not be about to do what I think you’re thinking of doing.”

He blinked at me for a moment as he parsed that and then shook me off. “He might be able to help us,” he insisted. 

“Hello?” the old voice called again and Pritkin raised an eyebrow at me. I scowled and finally shrugged in acquiescence. I was out of other ideas. He straightened his coat and stepped out into the open. I followed reluctantly. 

“Bernie,” he said, in his approximation of a friendly tone. “Didn’t expect to find you here at this time of night.” 

“John?” The old man in the doorway leaned heavily on his cane and squinted at us through spectacles that looked to be a good half-inch thick. “Thought you’d been banished to the States, old boy. Get fed up of the colonials, did you?” He let out a chortle that rapidly turned into a nasty hacking cough. 

“Not quite,” said Pritkin. “I’m just back here for research. There’s an important case.” 

Despite this vague and to me, horrendously transparent excuse, Bernie didn’t so much as stop to question why Pritkin had decided to break into the museum’s storage rooms at 3 o’clock in the morning rather than just calling for information like a normal person. Maybe in the world of magical academia, that was perfect normal, I thought, as he quizzed Pritkin on the tablet we were hunting for. 

“No memory of that one myself,” he wheezed, hobbling past the shelves at an impressive speed. “Sandstone, you say? Curious, yes, very curious indeed.” He stopped at the mislabelled spot we’d found earlier. “Hm. As you say, a filing error. Highly irregular.” He sounded personally offended. “Well, come into my office, I’ll see if I have anything on it in my own records.” 

We trailed after him like ducklings as he stumped back through the warren of corridors, the banging of his cane echoing in the silent halls. “And who’s this?” he asked suddenly, shooting me a surprisingly sharp look for someone whose eyes couldn’t seem to focus on anything further than a yard away. “Never known you to take an apprentice before, John.”

Pritkin elbowed me before I could say anything. “The Americans do things differently - everyone takes part in the trainee system over there.” I rubbed the sore spot he’d left on my arm and shot him a poisonous look. Just because he’d gone crazy and apparently abandoned his usual bordering-on-manic fidelity to the Pythian prime directive didn’t mean I was about to start blurting out my identity to every passerby on the street. 

“Well, at least you got a pretty one.” He cackled again and I set my jaw. I was liking this guy less and less by the second. 

His office stank of old magic and sour cabbages, not a winning combination. I stood with my arms folded as Bernie shifted sheafs of paper and piles of books, muttering to himself. “Got some rubbings in here somewhere, might have the right one, you never know,” he said. He shoved an armful of enormous old books at me and I took them hastily, nearly dropping a leather bound copy of The Hardison Compendium of Fey-Celt Studies on my toe. 

“What are you after this week, John?” he asked, thumbing through a binder full of smudged rubbings. “An anzu? A ninurta? Or something a little more fiery?” 

“That’s classified,” said Pritkin coolly, and I shot him a glare behind the old man’s back. For a guy who’d been around as long as Pritkin had, he was a terrible liar. He closed his eyes as though praying for patience. “I’ll share any new findings with you, Bernie, once the immediate problem has been resolved.” 

“Hmph. Well, my boy, there might not be any call for that at all.” Bernie scratched his chin and closed the binder with a snap. “Can’t seem to find any record of it at all. Are you sure you had the right number?” 

“Quite sure,” said Pritkin tersely.

“Is there any chance someone else might have borrowed it?” I interjected hastily, trying to keep things friendly. 

“Shouldn’t think so, no one’s allowed to remove the tablets outside of the study periods. Unless it’s been loaned to another collection.”

I put the books down on his desk before my arms could collapse and gave him my most winning smile. “And how could we check that?”

“Well, I could check with the administration department,” he said doubtfully. “But they tend be rather slow about responding to these things.”

“How slow?” Pritkin and I asked together.

Bernie looked startled. “At least two weeks, I’d imagine. Why? Is it urgent?”

I exchanged a quick glance with Pritkin and saw my own defeat mirrored in his eyes. Another dead end. 

“No, I guess not,” I said. “We’re just trying to cover all our bases.” 

“Yes,” Pritkin agreed. “We’ll just look somewhere else. Sorry to have disturbed you, Bernie.”

“Not at all, dear boy,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you and your charming lady friend but never say die, eh? You’ll work it out I’m sure.” He patted Pritkin on the shoulder in what he probably thought was a comforting manner. “Got a mind like a razor this one,” he told me, in a confidential tone. “You’ve picked a winner here.” 

For all that he’d annoyed me at the outset, I couldn’t help a little smile at that. “No arguments here,” I said. 

* * *

Outside Bernie’s office, having assured him we’d call him to let him if there was anything else he could do to help and said our goodbyes, I waited until the door closed before punching Pritkin in the arm. As usual, it hurt me more than him but he still looked aggrieved.

“What was that for?” 

“Not a problem, you said,” I snarked. “Wouldn’t notice a bomb going off, you said. And what were you thinking, talking to that guy? You’re the one who’s so gung-ho about protecting the timeline you got mad at me for freaking saving your life!”

“I never said I was angry with you for that!” he snapped back. “And we’re only a week behind the timeline. Bernie probably won’t even leave his office in that time anyway. He’s not exactly in tune with reality at the best of times. Your face has been all over the news for months and he didn’t even recognise you.” 

I paused. He had a point, but that didn’t make me any happier about it. “Let’s just go home,” I said and reached out to him. Even when I was mad at him, his hand still felt good in mine, warm, strong and solid. More irritated with myself than him at that stage, I took a deep breath and shifted us back across the world. 

* * *  
The next morning, Pritkin put his notes on the mysterious tablet up on the wall with the rest of the dead ends. 7 more days to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry for the terribly long wait! I've taken a bit of artistic license here and there in this chapter, so if something sounds blatantly made up, that's because it is. Please just bear with it for the sake of the story.


	8. Chapter 8

He was wearing a flannel shirt I’d never seen on him before, a faded, checkered reject from a lumberjack’s wardrobe. Presumably, like me, Pritkin was beginning to run out of clean clothes. Laundry was a hardly a priority right now. As with pretty much everything he wore, it was ugly as hell and dotted here and there with holes. And yet, I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from it.

Maybe it was because the book I was reading was just horrendously boring. Maybe it was the way the old seams were straining over his shoulders, as though he’d bulked up a little since he’d worn it last. Or maybe it was that he’d rolled the sleeves up to expose his muscled forearms, or that he’d left the top few buttons undone, showing a strangely mesmerising couple of inches of chest and hair. Since when was I into hairy guys anyway? Oh yeah. Since _Pritkin_. 

I’d long since stopped denying that I was into him. I'd been wrestling with this particular beast for, well, almost I'd long as I'd known him. I'd made plenty of excuses for myself, to convince myself that the flutter in my chest, the tingle of awareness when he got close meant nothing. I'd told myself it was a side effect of Pythian rituals, incubus powers and plain old adrenaline. But none of those things were in play now, and here I was staring at him, as though trying memorise every inch of his skin. Shit. I was attracted to him, just for him. And there was a train of thought I needed to head off before it built up steam. I had a feeling I wouldn't like where it took me. 

“Is something wrong?” 

I jumped guiltily, caught in the act. “Uh, nope, no, everything is fine, just fine.” 

He raised an eyebrow in evident disbelief but didn't call me out on it. “All right then.” 

I forced my head back down to the book but the letters swam in front of my eyes, the words stubbornly refusing to yield their meaning. Less than five minutes later, my eyes were stealing back to Pritkin, tracing the set of his jaw, running down the hard lines of his neck, following the trail I’d laid with my lips once or twice before. Without meaning to, I sighed and he looked up. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked again, with more edge this time. Heat crept into my cheeks but I tried to tough it out. 

“Nothing. Just having a little trouble concentrating, that’s all.” 

It was Pritkin’s turn to sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do I need to remind you that time is running out?” 

I looked involuntarily at the calendar. _Five more days_. 

“No, you really don’t.” 

“Have you forgotten what will happen if we don’t succeed here?” His tone was sharper than I’d heard it in a long time, and it stung, more than it should have.

“Yeah, the fiery destruction of the entire world had completely slipped my mind,” I snapped back. “Of course I haven’t forgotten!” 

He slammed his hand on the table, making me jump. “Then why are you sitting here, with your head in the clouds, daydreaming, when the clock is running down?!” 

“Because what’s the point?” The words burst out of me in flood that I hadn’t realised I’d been holding in. “We’ve been at this for weeks and we’ve hit nothing but dead ends! And we could keep going, for the rest of time and we would still hit never find anything, because you know what, whatever dumb luck I’ve scraped by on so far, it’s run out! And the - the pressure, the disasters, the expectations, all that shit I have to put up with all the time, it never stops, I never get to stop! So just let me take a goddamn break!” 

I stopped, panting, and found that I was standing up and leaning across the tiny table, with my hands balled into fists. Pritkin was looking a little shocked, although I wasn’t sure why; it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d yelled at him. My vision suddenly blurred and something wet slipped down my cheek. Oh. So that was why. 

I closed my eyes in humiliation and turned away to hide the tears. What was wrong with me? Where was all this bitterness and anger coming from? I went and sat down on the tiny sofa, scrubbing my hands furiously over my eyes. Why did I feel like giving up? 

Something cool nudged my hand and I opened my eyes to find Pritkin offering me a glass of what smelled like really good whiskey. 

“What's this?” I asked. 

“What does it look like?” He sat beside me and poured a glass for himself. “I thought you could do with a drink.” 

What I needed was about a year of sleep, a spa day and possibly some Xanax. But I'd settle for a drink. I took a sip and winced at the burn. 

“Do all war mages keep an emergency stash of booze? Open in case of emotions?” The couch and the whiskey were reminding me of another very stressful day, weeks ago, that had ended with the two of us, sitting in Caleb’s office, drinking and talking about our feelings. 

“Something like that,” said Pritkin. “But at least there were no dragons this time.” 

Apparently he was thinking along the same lines. I looked up and found him watching me carefully. 

“So do you want to talk about it?” 

“About what?” 

“Don't give me that. I know something's bothering you. I could count the number of times I've seen you cry on one hand. And I've never seen you give up.” 

I pressed the cool glass to my forehead, seeking relief from the oppressive heat. Even at night, nothing seemed to blow in the windows but warm, desert air. 

“Maybe this is it,” I said quietly. “Maybe I've run out, maybe I just can't keep going anymore.”

“Bullshit. You're the -” 

“Strongest person you know, I know, I know.” I drained my glass and this time I savoured the sting. “I'm sorry. I just - I don't feel strong. I don't feel that way at all.” 

Pritkin knocked back the rest of his own whiskey and filled us both back up. I stared into the amber depths of my glass, waiting for the inevitable rebuttal, the devastating counter argument that had to be coming because he never could leave well enough alone. But when he finally spoke, it was nothing like what I’d expected. 

“I’m sorry that I’m … so hard on you.” It came out haltingly, his voice almost faltering, and I looked up in astonishment. Pritkin apologised about as often as he smiled, and half as willingly. 

“I always told myself that I needed to push you, that you’d never survive otherwise.” His face was creased as though in pain, and he was looking through me rather than at me. Looking at something I couldn’t see. “I never considered that you would need more than physical strength to survive. That I could give you something more than just exercises and harsh words.” 

His eyes focused on my face once more. “Cassie, when I said you were strong, I didn’t mean for it to a burden to you, some standard to live up to. I just meant that I am astonished - I am in awe of everything you’ve done, of how far you’ve come. Of who you are.”

I didn’t respond to that for a long time, partly because I had no idea what to say, and partly because there was this stinging in my eyes and swelling in my throat, and if I tried to say anything, I was going to burst into tears, because that was probably the nicest thing he'd ever said to me. 

“You’re not hard on me,” I said at last, because that was the only part of his little speech I could address without getting choked up. Pritkin gave me an incredulous look. 

‘Okay, okay, I mean, you totally are,” I corrected myself. “But, kind of in a good way? I mean, you were right. If you hadn’t pushed me like that, I’d be deader than dead. I’d be super dead.”

Pritkin snorted out something close to a laugh and I checked the level of my glass suspiciously. How had it gotten so empty? I didn’t remember drinking that much. 

“Whatever!” I went on. “You know what I mean. All that training you gave me, it saved my life. And I’m not gonna tell you that it never made me feel like killing you or sleeping for a week, but it never made me feel bad about myself.”

“And is that what you’re feeling now?” he asked me, watching me carefully. “Bad about yourself?” 

I hesitated again, drinking the last swallow of whiskey in my glass to give myself time to think. Because at first it felt like a stupid question. When had I ever felt good about myself? I’d always felt like I was too small, too stupid, too scared or too weak to amount to anything. But then again, lately, I’d been doing better. I’d been managing, even coming into my own a little, until this latest crisis. 

“Not exactly,” I hedged. “I was doing okay, sort of, until … recently. But now, I’ve been feeling … I don’t know. Like I’ve been under pressure too long. Like the weight of it all is just too much.”

“I see,” said Pritkin, sounding like he didn’t see at all. “And when did you start feeling like that?” 

And there it was, the million dollar question. I topped both our glasses back up again, which was probably a bad idea because this conversation was getting into thorny territory and I would have been better off with my wits about me. But I really needed the time to think because the honest answer just wasn't an option here. I couldn’t tell Pritkin that my ability to cope had taken nose dive right around the time he’d gotten back. The obvious issue was that I was pretty sure that would seriously hurt his feelings and while most people who’d met Pritkin would argue that he didn’t have any, I knew better. For all that he projected an aura of competence and confidence bordering on arrogance, he had an astounding lack of self-worth, and dear God, did I know what that was like. I knew how I would react if our positions were reversed; if I’d come back after six months of hellish exile and a near death experience, only for Pritkin to tell me that he’d been having some kind of semi-depressive episode since I got back, I’d be crushed. Even if I knew intellectually that correlation didn’t mean causation, emotionally, I’d take that as a rejection and I was pretty sure he’d feel the same way. 

Maybe if I’d been able to offer him some kind of proper explanation for it, I would have spilled my guts anyway, but I’d been trying to rationalise these feelings for weeks and gotten nowhere. It just made no sense; the first day or so after I’d finally rescued Pritkin, I’d been euphoric, floating on air. And then, I’d had that massive argument with Mircea, the one we still hadn’t made up and might never get to, and it had all come crashing down. I’d been miserable for the few days between that blow out and the crisis with Ares’ Lock, the mess that had started this whole crazy new adventure, but that all made sense to me. Of course I’d been down in the dumps after a nasty fight like that. The part that was confusing me, that was starting to make me seriously doubt my own sanity, that came after. When I started getting obsessively clingy, panicky about letting Pritkin out of my sight. When I started experiencing mood swings, and weird, possessive jealousy. When that latent attraction started bursting out of that little corner of my brain where I’d repressed it for so long, flaring up at the most casual touch, at even a glance. When being around him felt like stepping into sunlight after months underground and having my heart squeezed in a vice all at the same time. I was an unstable, distracted mess and I knew it but I had no idea why and it was driving me freaking insane. If I wasn’t there already. 

I took another slug of whiskey, wondering how on earth I could put all that into words without sounding like I’d gone completely off my rocker and without insulting Pritkin, and of course, that only added to the fog in my brain. 

“It’s complicated,” I said finally. 

“What isn’t?” he replied, but with a crinkle around his eyes that gentled the question. He waited another beat while I groped for words before adding: “We don’t have to talk about this.”

I wavered, desperately wanting the escape that he was so uncharacteristically offering, but knowing deep down that I owed it to him to make the effort. 

“We don’t,” he repeated more firmly. “You said it yourself, you need a break.”

My eyebrows shot up. 

“I tell you that I need a break, like, every day. Sometimes twice a day.” I couldn’t keep the incredulous note out of my voice. “Why are you listening to me now?!” 

“Because I never did before.” He sighed and brushed his hair out of his eyes — it really was getting long. “Consider this a very belated attempt to be a better … friend to you.” 

This was straying back to that very emotional place we’d wandered into before and I wasn’t usually a weepy drunk, but if he said one more oddly nice thing, I was going to end up snivelling into my whiskey. So I ran with it. 

“All right, a break. What do we do on a break?” 

Pritkin shrugged, almost self-consciously. “Whatever you like.”

I had to think about it, because relaxation wasn’t our normal forte. Crazy, adrenaline-soaked brushes with death, yes. Chill downtime, no. It was almost a little unnerving, which was stupid, because come on, I hung out with Pritkin all the time. But I guess I didn’t usually do it with this damned little voice in the back of my head, whispering about all the interesting and naked ways we could fill this sudden free time. If I hadn’t known that Pritkin would smell a rat, I would have pleaded exhaustion and scurried off to bed. But he was already suspicious enough, and no matter what he said about his new found resolution to go easy on me, it would go against the very nature of the man, the essence of his being, to let go of a mystery without digging out the truth. Running off to bed after a breakdown like that would be tantamount to admitting that something was wrong, that there was something I wasn’t telling him, and damn him, he would never let that go. So I had to stay here, and act like nothing was wrong, put him off the scent by pretending that all I needed was to let off a little steam. And that little voice could go straight to hell where it belonged. 

“How about a game?” I suggested, with a brightness that sounded so fake I nearly winced. 

“A game?” I could practically read the thoughts rippling across his mind, his frown at the thought of something so frivolous, followed by his slight shrug as he remembered that he’d agreed to do whatever I wanted. “All right. What kind of game?”

 _Truth or Dare,_ whispered the dumb, horny part of me. 

“Never Have I Ever!” I practically shrieked, even though the very last thing I needed to do was get drunker. But hey, fake it ’til you make it, right? Maybe if I got drunk enough I’d forget all these stupid feelings and the deep, dark, aching parts of my subconscious would stop lurking around, pressing their sharp edges against my waking mind, threatening to make me think of things that I’d buried for my own good. Maybe if I pretended to be okay long enough, I actually would be. 

* * *

You know what, it sort of worked, for a while. Pritkin was a surprisingly good sport about the whole thing. By some kind of unspoken pact, we avoided the usual sexual slant that these kind of drinking games usually took on — I imagine he was as keen to discuss our ‘emergencies’ as I was to tell him about my sex life with Mircea — and kept things innocent, almost playful. Meeting his younger self had given me some idea of the kind of awful scrapes Pritkin had gotten in his early life, but now I was getting all the gory details. 

“Never have I ever …” I trailed off, trying to think of something so ridiculous even he couldn’t have done it. The last hour or so that we’d been playing, chatting and drinking, I’d discovered there wasn’t much in that category. “Fought a bear?” 

He ducked his head sheepishly and drank, and I let out an inelegant guffaw. 

“For real, a bear?” I don’t know why I was so surprised. “What was it, like, possessed by a demon or something?” 

“No.” Pritkin grinned openly, which was enough to suggest that despite his insane metabolism, he was at least a little tipsy. “Just a normal, every day bear.” 

I dissolved into helpless giggles, partly because even if I hadn’t been totally sloshed, that image would have been funny. 

“What on earth did you do that for?” I asked when I could breathe again. 

Maybe it was just the booze, but I thought his cheeks went a bit pink. 

“We’re not playing Truth or Dare,” he said as though echoing the voice that had been plaguing me and my stomach gave a little lurch in response. 

“Okay, okay, your turn!” I tried to change the subject as swiftly as possible, earning myself a bemused quirk of an eyebrow, because subtlety had left the building shortly after my fourth glass, and we were well past that now. Luckily Pritkin was either sticking hard to the ‘give Cassie a break’ rule or he had better ideas on how to make me squirm. 

“Never have I ever shaved someone else’s legs while in their body,” he said and I scowled. 

“That’s pretty specific,” I protested, even as I took a drink. “I was guessing about the bear thing — it’s not my fault you’ve picked a fight with practically every form of life in this dimension.”

“And some forms of unlife,” he added dryly. 

“Never have I ever promised my partner a picnic and then fed them spinach wraps,” I retaliated, because if he wanted to get personal, I could get personal. 

“What’s wrong with spinach wraps?” 

“Nothing, if you don’t have tastebuds.” I waggled my glass at him. “Drink up.”

He did, albeit with narrowed eyes and sour expression that promised retribution. 

“Never have I ever faked an injury to get out of training.” 

“That was one time!” I said indignantly, and drank another sip, noticing as I did that my glass was nearly empty. Was this glass number six, I wondered, or seven? It was all beginning to blur together at little. I should have been pacing myself better, I really should. Maybe if I had what I said next would never have slipped out. 

“Never have I ever … been in love.”

Pritkin raised his glass to drink automatically and then paused with his lips on the rim. “Oh, come on, yes you have. That’s against the rules. ”

If I’d had any sense at all, I would have agreed with him and let it go there and then. Instead, I found myself sticking my heels in mulishly. 

“How would you know what I feel?”

He opened his mouth, his face rumpling almost angrily and then closed it again with a snap. 

“I suppose I wouldn’t,” he replied tersely and brought the glass to his lips, then stopped again, grimacing and sighing as though buffeted by the waves of some internal conflict. “But I thought … I mean, what about … Mircea?” 

The name rang in the air with force, like a clock chiming midnight. Neither of us had as much as alluded to his existence throughout all these long weeks; in all honesty, I had been trying not to think about him, and as for Pritkin, well, he never liked to talk about Mircea. But now everything I’d been trying to avoid came rushing back - the tension that had only mounted after Pritkin’s return, that harsh, bitter fight, unlike anything that had ever happened between us before, and the cold silence that had followed. 

When I finally spoke, my answer seemed to come from somewhere outside of me, in a hoarse voice that I hardly recognised as my own. “I don’t know if I would call that love, exactly.” 

Had I really just said that? I’d loved Mircea for more than half my life. It was a fact of my personality, it constituted a part of who I was just as concretely as my grief for my parents or my icy hatred for Tony. I wouldn’t know who I was without it. And yet I had. I had said that. 

“Fair enough.” If he recognised the massive blow I’d just delivered to my own psyche, Pritkin showed no sign of it. He just lifted his glass in mock salute and took another gulp. 

“My turn,” he said. “Let’s see. Never have I ever …” 

His voice turned into a faint buzzing in my ears and if he finished his challenge, I didn’t hear it. 

“You’ve been in love, then,” I blurted instead and wondered if I was maybe having an out-of-body experience. Or been possessed by another half-Fey demigoddess. Because that was the only remotely comparable thing I knew to the total loss of control I was feeling right at that moment. Pritkin didn’t seem to be doing much better. His hand jerked as he went to refill his glass and whiskey sloshed onto the floor - the cheap kind, luckily. The good stuff was long since gone. 

“Yes.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke, but his face was guarded, walls in place and higher than I’d seen them in a long time.

“What does it feel like?” I asked, giving up on trying to reign myself in.

The walls wavered briefly, Pritkin’s eyes cutting to me in a flicker of startled green before his defences could slam back into place. 

“What kind of question is that?” he asked and I just shrugged, helplessly. I didn’t know what was wrong with me any more than he did. 

“It’s … hard to put into words,” he said, when I didn't offer any further explanation. 

“Could you try? Please?” 

Pritkin shot me another of those, quick, vulnerable looks and whatever he saw on my face made his lips narrow to a thin slash.

“In my experience, it's like falling,” he said, after a long pause. He spoke slowly, deliberately, as if measuring each word, weighing them on his lips. “First, the ground crumbles beneath my feet, and I begin to - to slip, to lose control. Then suddenly, the earth drops out from under me all at once and I ... plummet.” 

I snorted indelicately and it came out more like a hiccough, because, yeah, I was pretty much plastered. 

“That sounds rough.”

His stern expression softened a little, his lips quirking into an almost smile. 

“Love usually is, when you fight it,” he said. “But once you stop - once you give into it” - He broke off and shook his head, his smile turning rueful - “It feels like flying.” 

“And then?” My voice sounded strange and husky to me, and I found myself leaning gradually towards him, like a magnet towards a lodestone. 

“Then, I stop worrying so much about being in control.” He turned to face me fully and there was a warmth, a hot gleam in those beautiful, clear eyes that hadn't been there before, alien and familiar all at once. “And whenever I'm with her, all my fear, anger, despair - they fade until I can barely remember them.” 

“And what's left?” I barely dared to voice the words, as if anything above the softest whisper would break the strange spell that was weaving between us. 

“Nothing but fire,” he murmured, and I could have sworn he leant in a little. Was he looking at my mouth? “Nothing but burning inside of me.” 

Burning. I mouthed the word almost unconsciously. Yes, that's what this felt like – the fire along my nerves as I closed the last distance between us, the flames licking the pit of my stomach when he didn't pull away and then the heat, the searing heat, when my mouth finally closed over his. _Burning._


End file.
